Ice and Darkness
by Racke
Summary: A screwed up spell sends Eva into the middle of Kyuubi's sealing process. She spends the next decade kicking the annoying little thing around their cage for shits and giggles. Then Naruto makes a friend, and suddenly Team 7 causes a bit more chaos than they really ought to. Crack
1. Chapter 1

Ice and Darkness ch 1

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

XXX

Evangeline wasn't a big fan of redheads. In fact, she'd never met a redhead that she actually liked.

The first redhead she'd met was one of the many people trying to burn her at the stake, which was really not a very nice thing to experience. The second redhead she'd met had been impossibly charming, fantastically kind, and very much not interested – which got frustrating – so much 'not interested' in fact that he sealed her in a school before going off to get himself killed somewhere. Bastard.

The third redhead she met was a recluse from society, the fourth was far too nosy for her own good, the fifth was a violent monkey that just so happened to be immune to magic, and the sixth kept cheerfully running away.

The seventh redhead she'd met was actually worse than his redheaded father – who'd been number two – though exactly how he managed to be more annoying than him was hard to say. It could've been his childish insistence on having bested her, despite her holding back. It could've been because he was just as charming as his father, something which meant that he could perhaps be molded into becoming interested. Or it could've been the fact that he was largely responsible for that one spell that went a little haywire.

Eva scoffed at the idea that anyone could describe being physically launched into a different world, running into Death, being hurled straight into the jaws of an immortal demon, and then managing to get caught up in a gigantic sealing array only to finally wake up inside of an infant's stomach, as a spell going a 'little' haywire.

Eva was also fairly certain that there was a ninth redhead involved in her sealing – the eight had been a very noisy little girl that kept screaming in terror – which just proved her point. Redheads were to be avoided, killed at sight, or be completely wiped from the human gene-pool.

Needless to say, she was fairly sure that such points were the reason that people kept calling her evil. But she'd never let anything like that stop her before. No, she was the Dark Evangel! She could be as prejudicedly evil as she wanted to! It said so in her contract!

Okay, so perhaps she'd written that contract herself, but that was beside the point. The point being that redheads were evil, and that she was fully allowed to kill them at sight for what their fellow redheads had done to her over the years.

Which was why the red-furred fox that kept screaming for blood was quickly and efficiently dealt with.

Unfortunately, she couldn't actually kill it, what with its immortality and all, but considering how she'd managed to turn it into a fox no larger than the average house-cat, she was fairly alright with this.

The ability to kick the whining little thing across the cage whenever she got bored helped.

Boredom was an actual issue for her though. She'd spent fifteen years in a school filled with crazy people, and before that she'd been traveling across her world for centuries. Being trapped in a cage, with only the vaguest of ideas of what was happening outside of her prison, wasn't something she was feeling particularly pleased with. Which was why kicking the nine-tailed little fox-cat across the prison cell became her most favorite pastime.

The thing that called itself the Kyuubi didn't really agree with her, but she was evil, she was allowed to be mean to others. It said so in her contract.

XXX

Naruto stared at the boy lying in front of him. The boy that was almost a friend, a rival of sorts. The boy that had jumped in front of an attack meant to kill him. The boy that had just saved his life by paying with his own.

The masked enemy mused clinically if this was his first time seeing someone die.

Naruto wanted to hurt him. He wanted to hurt him _so badly_.

Growling in anger, he tore his eyes away from his dead teammate, latching on to the reflection in the ice mirrors instead.

He needed to be faster. He needed to be stronger. He needed to be better.

And then it came. Ice boiling through his blood. Despair drowning his mind. Hatred tearing at the inside of his skin.

For the briefest of moments he thought he heard a young girl's cruel laughter, and then he lost himself in destruction.

The ice bent. The mirrors were torn from their moorings, and suddenly the masked nin was tumbling across the bridge. Shock apparent even through the porcelain covering his face.

Naruto cared little for it. The enemy wasn't hurting yet. He wanted them to hurt. He _needed_ them to hurt.

At speeds he didn't know he could achieve, he launched himself at the enemy.

Ice formed all around him, darkness swirled in a maelstrom of smoldering hatred, but all he could see was the enemy. The enemy that wasn't hurting enough yet.

Roaring in anger as the enemy stood once again, Naruto continued his assault. Then, with cracks appearing from all the blows, the broken porcelain mask slipped.

Haku stood in front of him.

Kind, gentle, smiling Haku. Haku who wanted to protect his precious people. Haku who'd been nice to him.

His punch stopped before it hit, his eyes tearing up at the horrible absurdity of it all. He didn't want to kill him. Haku was his enemy. Haku had killed Sasuke. Naruto wanted to hurt him. But he was a precious person, he understood not having a purpose. He couldn't hurt him.

"No..." He choked out in a strangled voice. "No..." He stared in horror as the boy looked at him with empty eyes.

"I am Zabuza-sama's tool. A useless tool will be discarded." He stated in monotone.

And Naruto understood. Through his horror, through his naivety, through his inexperience, through his carelessness, he understood. There was no hesitation in Haku's eyes, no second chances. A broken tool would be discarded, and Haku wouldn't survive that. Better to die now, than to face that end.

Naruto wasn't allowed to spare his life. Life was no longer Haku's place. Haku was to be discarded, and so he was already unmistakably dead. Whether through his heart, or through his flesh, that was all that remained to be seen. And Naruto knew what it would be like to die through his heart.

Mercy was not allowed. Mercy was death. Death was the only option.

He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to cover his hands in the blood of one of his precious people. But he had no choice. This was what his life would be.

It was only now that he truly understood the horror of what Zabuza had done in his exam. The horror of the exam itself.

There would be no greater nightmare than to stand before this choice.

Then the sound of a thousand birds echoed through the mist, and suddenly Haku moved again, because he could still be of some use to his master.

XXX

Evangeline wasn't sure what to think of the boy's first attempt at drawing at her powers. It proved how impressive the seal-work was, certainly, but it also further drove home the point that she was trapped. She was to be a power-battery for some blond brat who didn't know what war meant. A brat who'd signed up to be a soldier anyway.

Evangeline couldn't really bring herself to like anyone in this world. Not that she tried particularly hard, mind you, but still. And she could understand an orphan's desperate need for attention, just as much as she understood his unstoppable desire to live.

She was a bit peeved that she'd ended up in the body of some kind of reckless moron with too big of a heart, but if the options were between that and the many others she'd spied in the passing, then she was fairly alright with it.

Better some reckless idiot than a coward, better a class-clown than a stuck up, inbred, self-obsessed moron. Or a fangirl. She hated fangirls, even if it was a relatively new hatred, partially developed on behalf of the girls' very shrill voices, and the lack of actual intelligent observations.

She kind of missed Chachamaru actually. Cold logic in a somewhat gentle frame. She'd even found herself missing the gynoid's questioning hints of her inability at being truthful about her own feelings, which was really just further proof that she seriously needed to talk to someone, pronto.

XXX

Naruto pondered what he remembered from the Academy lessons on the Kyuubi. A monster made from fire and hatred, each of its nine tails bringing destruction with every swing.

It sounded powerful, it sounded frightening, it sounded absolutely nothing like what he'd felt at the bridge in Wave.

There'd been ice and darkness, and whatever hatred and anger was aimed at his opponent, the hatred of the self, of the situation, seemed to weigh heavier in his mind. Even had he not remembered the laughter of a young girl, Naruto would've been forced to admit that he had his doubts about the Kyuubi.

If its powers were so mistaken from the rumors, then what did that mean for its motivations? Did it merely attack in self-defense? Was it really evil, and people just made an utter mistake about its abilities? Or had something changed once it was sealed in him?

There were a lot of questions, questions that he didn't feel comfortable with asking the old man. In fact, the only one he could imagine asking these questions of would've been the Kyuubi itself.

But how could he ask something that was sealed inside of him?

The answer had come to him after Iruka had told him about 'coping methods' for watching someone die. It had been a good lecture, despite being uncomfortable, and had served its purpose well. He would remember Haku, he would mourn Haku, and he would move on.

The idea was that he should remain quiet and try to 'listen to his subconscious'. This was difficult, as Naruto disliked being quiet, but he figured there was a chance that he might be able to get into contact with the Kyuubi like this.

So, he took a deep breath, and then he was silent.

His first clue that he was doing it right, came when he heard dripping water.

Slowly prying his eyes open, Naruto began his trek through the strange water-filled corridors. He wasn't sure where he was going, but he figured that it would work itself out.

He was proven correct when he reached a giant room, and the gigantic gate that took up one of its walls.

"About time you got here, the fox is starting to whine again." Came the voice of a young girl.

Naruto blinked, not quite understanding what she'd just said, but noticing a small, blonde girl standing on the other side of the giant bars of the cage.

There was a sound of something hissing, and the girl looked away from him, sending a glare at something else inside of the cage.

"Oh, bugger off." She kicked after what looked a lot like a red cat with nine tails, and it scampered off into the darkness.

Naruto finally opened his mouth. "Who're you?" His voice tinged with suspicion.

"I'm Evangeline AK McDowell." The girl stated elaborately. "I'm from a different world, you could say. My student got a spell... 'wrong' sounds like such an inadequate word... well, he messed it up, and accidentally launched me into what I can only assume was the sealing process of the being that you know as the Kyuubi. I've been trapped in this cage with the annoying little bugger ever since."

Naruto was fairly sure that the Kyuubi had been known to be a gigantic creature that towered over even the Hokage tower, and having someone call it 'little' made him feel a bit weird. He decided to voice his confusion on the description.

The girl looked at him for a moment, before nodding absently. "Well, it was a lot bigger when I got here. But it kept trying to attack me, so I beat the snot out of it. Unfortunately I can't actually kill it, what with it being immortal and all, but I doubt anyone but a toddler could think it unstoppable, as it is now." She pointed at the red bundle that poked its head out again, hissing.

"But I thought that not even the Yondaime could defeat it?" He frowned.

Evangeline shrugged noncommittally. "Wouldn't doubt it. I mean, he was only human after all. I only know of one Human that could've beaten it, and that's using one of my own techniques." She paused. "Though, there is the _possibility_ that Rakan could've pulled it off. Damn game-breaker of an idiot."

Naruto didn't know who this Rakan might be, but hearing her call someone really strong and then call him an idiot in the same sentence was a bit odd to him, as he'd heard all his life that only intelligent people had any chance in ninja-life. But regardless of that, there was something a bit more pressing than even the notion that there were people stronger than the Yondaime.

"What do you mean with 'human'?" He asked cautiously. She looked human enough, but that could be a trick.

"I'm a vampire." She answered absently. "I'm probably about as old as the Kyuubi, obviously stronger, but I don't think I was ever quite as immortal as it."

"No way!" Naruto crossed his arms in an 'x'. "There's no way that a brat like you could be older than the Kyuubi!"

"Who are you calling a brat?" She asked in a calm voice that sent chills down his spine, a cold glint in her eyes even as a fake smile drifted across her lips.

The dead-last of his class suddenly felt very much inclined to never mention the girl's age ever again. She was scarier than the Kyuubi!

XXX

Kakashi stared at his student.

Two out of three were acting like they usually did. Sasuke was brooding and Sakura was fawning. Obviously, this was the way it should've been.

Naruto looked to be meditating.

There was something fundamentally wrong with seeing the loud and cheerful boy wearing such a serious face whilst sitting down silently. Hell, the mere act of sitting down was downright absurd with how the boy normally acted.

"Naruto, what are you doing?" He asked carefully, hoping that the boy had a good reason for acting weird, and would start acting in a predictable manner soon enough.

"Talking with Eva." He responded through closed eyes.

"Eva?" The obviously feminine name drew Sakura's attention.

Kakashi was worried about other things though, namely, the act of talking whilst meditating. He shouldn't be able to talk to people far away whilst meditating, which left only people inside of him. Like the Kyuubi. Kakashi was understandably nervous of having his student on speaking terms with a gigantic monster capable of destroying Konoha. He liked Konoha, it was filled with eye-candy, good food, porn, and the memorial of those dear to him.

"Evil Dark Mage with a complex about her lack of-... Oww!" He flinched. "Dammit! Don't do that! Crazy old hag! Oww!" He flinched again. "Alright! I'm sorry! Just stop doing that already!"

Kakashi was now notably worried. He wasn't sure what a Dark Mage was, or why he called her an old hag, but he'd heard the word 'evil' in there, and now she was hurting his student. That was really really bad. What if she hurt him in the middle of a dangerous mission? He could flinch, and then he could get himself killed! That wasn't good.

"Naruto." He started seriously.

"She's an evil vampire from a different world. She dislikes being stuck inside of the seal since it gets boring, and fuzz-butt is kind of..." Naruto paused his quick interjection, apparently understanding his teacher's concerns. "Kind of not really important anymore." He shivered before commenting silently. "She's scary when she's mad." Sighing, he continued his reassurances. "But she won't do anything to inconvenience me in battle. She promised, and she keeps her promises. It says so in her contract."

"'Contract'?" Kakashi blinked, not really understanding what he'd just been told.

"Any evil-doer has to write a contract." He took on a tone of voice of someone repeating a long-standing lesson. "Nobody else would do it for them, and it gets boring over the centuries if you don't have a handicap."

"'Centuries'?" He didn't know what was going on anymore, and this really hadn't been the way he'd pictured the day would go.

"She's a vampire." He noted with a sigh. "Which means that she's immortal. Sort of. Not quite as immortal as the Kyuubi, but still a lot more immortal than a human could be." He paused. "Though she also notes that some guy called Rakan is probably stupidly strong enough to kill Time, if it ever comes knocking... I'm not sure if she's kidding."

"What would an evil immortal be doing in _you_?" Sasuke asked with a tone that made it quite obvious that he didn't understand why Kakashi was taking this seriously.

"Devouring the Kyuubi's powers." Naruto noted absently. "And ranting about how she should so totally be allowed to wipe out all redheads. And on how her student is so dead if she ever gets her hands on him." He paused, tilting his head, his eyes still closed. "I think she misses him... Oww!" He flinched.

By now Kakashi was looking slightly horrified, Sakura was starting to look completely lost, and Sasuke had apparently latched on to the Kyuubi-reference.

"Dobe, what is the Kyuubi doing in you?" He demanded angrily.

"The Yondaime sealed it in me... along with Eva, but that was mostly her student's fault, or the Shinigami's, hard to tell. Other than that, it whines a lot about being kicked around like a retarded puppy whenever Eva gets bored."

Right, Kakashi noted to himself. His student had just revealed himself as the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki, and he hadn't even seemed to notice, too busy with this Eva-person. Who was a vampire, which Kakashi had never heard of.

"What's a vampire Naruto?" Kakashi focused on trying to get an explanation.

"An immortal being that drinks the blood of others." He paused. "Some of them are really mean, others are kind of mean, and others are products of a sick society." He recited to himself. "That means that they were hunted down and burned at the stake by humans, repeatedly if they were immortal enough, until they started fighting back."

"But that's horrible!" Sakura latched on to sympathy in her confusion.

"It's life. And humans are cruel." Naruto noted distractedly. "Eva has a philosophy on life, but I think she's wrong. I think it's why she calls herself an 'evil' mage." He winced a little. "That and her contract. She's working on a clause to make sure that she can kill any redhead she runs across in the future at first glance as a preemptive measure."

Kakashi paused briefly as he tried to remember any redheads that might get caught in this clause and expire preemptively. He couldn't think of anyone in Konoha. That was probably a good thing.

XXX

Kakashi stared in horror as Naruto gleefully jumped at the opportunity of learning under Eva.

His horror didn't stem from how his student would now be learning under a different sensei and that he couldn't satisfy any potential sadistic urge he had to screw with the boy's mind any longer, but rather stemmed from how an evil vampire who'd wiped the floor with the Kyuubi was going to be teaching his student how to fight.

Naruto could think on his feet, but wouldn't ever become book-smart; he had endless chakra reserves, but wouldn't know chakra control if it came up to him and hit him over the head with a mallet; he was innocent in a cheerful way, but was mindbogglingly annoying to spend too much time with.

Now he would be able to beat down bijuu with little effort? This was something akin to teaching a five year old how to make explosive notes and then leave the paint out whilst you went shopping for a few hours. It was like an explosive accident – with extreme amounts of property damage – waiting to happen.

His first inquiries into what Eva would be teaching him weren't calming either. Apparently she didn't know any spell that _didn't_ cause mayhem to at least some degree – with the possible exception of a spell that she was fairly sure that he'd need to overload anyway which meant that the result would most likely be the same.

Whimpering softly at the thought of being forced to write up pile upon horrible pile of paperwork for the destruction of Konoha's training grounds, Kakashi took a deep breath.

He could to this, he only needed to find some place where he could aim Naruto where he wouldn't accidentally blow up the Hokage monument.

Pause.

Didn't Naruto, despite his shitty control, manage to create hundreds upon hundreds of Kage Bunshin without any issues, even without drawing upon the Kyuubi?

Kakashi noted to himself that this was definitely true.

And wouldn't this mean that if someone taught him how to control his chakra properly, he'd be able to pretty much make an entire army at will?

Kakashi noted again, that this was indeed true and a potentially useful thing to have at Konoha's disposal in the future, but that he wasn't certain where his subconscious was going with these points.

And couldn't someone technically regain all memories and experiences from a Kage Bunshin, turning it, with such an amount, into an actual way of learning faster?

Really? Well, Kakashi had to admit that that would certainly come in handy.

And wouldn't this Eva-person figure this out and decide to let him advance at a quicker rate to keep her from getting annoyed with him?

Kakashi nodded, of course she would, that would just be common sense.

And wasn't she teaching him huge, destructive techniques that could take down bijuu?

Kakashi frowned, he really didn't he'd like where he thought that his subconscious was going with this.

And wouldn't that, technically, mean that there would be hundreds of Naruto – non-thinking Naruto – throwing around highly destructive techniques, without any control, all around Konoha?

Kakashi paled. This... this... this was far more dire than he could possibly have imagined.

In fact, this seemed like a good time to leave the country. For a few decades or so. Maybe rejoin ANBU, kill people in efficient but horribly messy ways for the good of Konoha. Hey, maybe he could get himself reassigned to Root? He'd heard good things about that place, namely of its many bunkers and out-of-Konoha missions.

A small part of him noted that the chunin exam was coming up, and that jounins really couldn't be asked to take care of the paperwork that a chunin might create, or be blamed for the actions of a chunin that might've served under them as a student at some point in time. Or, at the very least, not be blamed _officially_.

Right, he was going to be stopping by the Hokage tower for some quick forms for his chunin-to-be students, and then he'd have a sudden desire to take out some vacation on the other side of the Elemental Nations. That sounded like a fantastic idea – even if he doubted that he'd be able to get out of Konoha in time, no matter what excuse he pulled.

XXX

A written test.

Naruto gulped, really not liking where this exam was going.

Then Eva was there, sadistically amused at his cold sweat and yet oddly encouraging with her presence.

Ignoring his personal feeling of doom, Naruto focused instead on his tenant, delving deeper into meditation even as he walked to his assigned seat.

Eva wasn't especially knowledgeable of the life of a shinobi, but she knew a lot of other things, and with that knowledge and years upon years of experiences, compounded on a calm and logical mind that was used to annihilate all opposition, there was a distinct possibility that she could tell him the answers.

So, when the rules were explained and the only thing he could feel from her was an endless source of amusement... Naruto decided that perhaps there was something weird about this test. He wasn't sure what it was, or how Eva would know of it, or if it was merely amusing her in general, but the fact was that she usually had a reason for feeling something other than boredom.

Usually that reason was somehow related to sadism though, so there was a big chance that she merely cackled evilly in response to his horror at being confronted with a written test.

Still, best to check before dismissing the thought.

They started out with ten points. They lost one point for every question they got wrong. They lost a decided amount of points for every time they got caught cheating. They would be given the tenth question at a later time.

Naruto blinked. This sounded like a set-up.

He wasn't sure if the questions were difficult because he was an idiot, or if the examiner had made them supposedly impossible, but the fact was that you weren't removed if you cheated. Even if you got caught. As long as you didn't get caught too many times.

His lips twitching slightly as he began to realize that this was all one gigantic prank on all the genin present, Naruto closed his eyes and started to _think_.

He wasn't good enough at stealth to be able to cheat and get away clean, but maybe he could work around the amount of times you were allowed to get caught.

If you lost two points for each time you were caught, then he was allowed to get caught once for every three questions he got right. Considering that he couldn't be sure if the one he was cheating off would be correct, this became slightly more hazardous.

It would be best not to get caught, but he already knew that was impossible with his current skills and situation. He pranked people, he distracted people, he cloned things, he blew things up.

Tilting his head slowly, Naruto pondered his own abilities for a while. He wouldn't be able to sneak away from his seat without getting caught, and he wouldn't be able to move fast enough that people wouldn't berate him for his attempt at moving from his seat. This left either using Kage Bunshin to fill the room and check every single paper before letting them disperse themselves – henge optional – or blatantly grabbing someone else's paper and copying it before the examiners got too peeved at him.

Naruto wasn't sure if he'd be able to fill the room with henge'd Kage Bunshin, but felt that it was the most sensible option of those available to him.

Nodding to himself, Naruto put his hands together in a fake – but quite convincing – prayer to whatever exam-gods were out there. Then he shifted his hands a little, and suddenly the room was filled with Ibiki-clones. Probably around fifty clones of the scarred man stared coldly over the shoulders of the genin present, looming over them in a way that really was quite nerve-wrecking.

A horrified silence stretched across the room before the Ibiki-clones finally nodded solemnly and dispersed.

Naruto tried his best to ignore the sudden headache that come from dispersing so many clones in the midst of attempting to memorize written text – and read the horrible handwriting of a certain few – and began to scratch away at his own test, dutifully ignoring the relieved sighs of his fellow genin, and the ecstatic cackling of Eva.

He hated written tests. Even _if_ cheating was approved of.

XXX

Naruto snickered at Eva's comment of 'not another idiot' as Anko Mitarashi made her big entrance through a very-much _closed_ window.

"Something funny, brat?" Anko's eyes glimmered dangerously.

Naruto briefly considered trying to praise the crazy woman's idiocy, but decided against it, mostly because he got the feeling that she might stab him with that kunai that she was now twirling casually around her finger.

"N-No. I was just really glad that you weren't a redhead, because then Eva would start ranting about killing you as a preemptive strike towards annoyance." He accidentally started rambling a little bit.

The woman blinked, looking at him strangely for a long moment, before finally turning towards his teammates. "The hell is he talking about?"

"Apparently, Eva believes that redheads bring her random annoyances and bad luck." Sakura deadpanned, looking very much like she'd spoken those words enough times that she wasn't even bothered by the clearly unstable person that she was talking to.

"And she's allowed to kill them in preemptive strikes. It says so in her contract." Naruto helpfully added, holding up a bunch of papers that the Evil Mage had forced him to copy down methodically, word for word.

Anko stood still for a long moment, her mouth looking a little slack as she stared at the bunch of papers that the blonde loudmouth was helpfully showing to her.

She hadn't actually been prepared for this level of craziness when she got out of bed that day. Funny that.

XXX

Naruto blinked up at the gigantic snake looming over him, jaws wide.

He'd heard that the Forest of Death was filled with... well, monsters, really. But this? This was just ridiculous.

Shaking his head at it, he called out the spell for fifty Arrows of Ice, and promptly launched it at the snake's open maw.

Naruto grimaced as the gigantic snake's brains was splattered over both the nearby trees as well as himself, but decided to ignore the smell of being covered in gore, instead hurriedly setting off towards where he'd last seen his teammates.

That wind that had blasted him this way couldn't have been natural after all, and anyone with those kinds of jutsus to throw around, would probably be really bad news.

XXX

Orochimaru had been a bit confused at the words that the Uchiha's blond teammate shared with his former apprentice, but maybe Sarutobi had finally begun allowing crazy people to join the ninja force in an effort to keep up the numbers.

There was technically the possibility that the boy had some manner of Kekkai Genkai that allowed him to communicate with a second personality of some kind, though it was highly unlikely that such a thing was the case, especially as Kabuto should've reported that.

More likely, the idiot-brat was not only the dead-last, but also severely mentally disturbed, to the point where he believed that there was a female that could talk to him from the inside.

There was of course the possibility that this might be Konoha's Jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi, since his age seemed to match up with the attack all those years ago, but if the demon-vessel was so obviously crazy and deep into communications with the Kyuubi, then there was no way that the chunin and jounin would've been so surprised by the pink-haired girl's explanation.

Nonetheless, he'd continue on with his plans, because crazy or not, it wasn't like the boy could actually hurt _him_, what with being an S-Class missing-nin with more time spent in battle than the boy's entire lifetime.

So he'd blown the blond away with a blast of air, and was now left with his target and the pink-haired little girl that was probably less of a danger in a straight-up fight than Tora the Cat.

Even if that cat was admittedly a very very dangerous feline. A feline that many would in fact swear to be a demon spawn of some sort. Even so, it was still a _cat_ and whilst horribly good at running away and capable of easily wounding a genin with its frantic claws, it wasn't like it could assassinate the Hokage on even an awfully good day.

Orochimaru focused instead on the boy with his newly activated Kekkai Genkai, which would mean that the snake-sannin shouldn't use any techniques in the brat's immediate field of vision – no need to give the child a better ninjutsu arsenal before he'd been converted to Orochimaru's way of thinking after all.

And so began their fight. Or well, Sasuke's _evaluation_, because Orochimaru wasn't really fighting the desperately struggling boy. That would be a bit too unfair, and it wasn't his purpose to do so regardless, since he merely wanted to make sure that Sasuke would be strong enough to survive the effort he put into the Cursed Seal before applying it to the genin.

Then what felt like fifty instant punches of something distinctly icy smacked into his mud-clone, causing it to dissolve in mid-attack.

Blinking curiously at the attack that he'd never seen before, Orochimaru turned towards where he believed that the attack had come from, carefully creating another mud-clone to take any potential follow-up-blasts.

Just because he could easily survive something like that, didn't mean that he wanted to experience it.

The blond boy in orange was there – though his clothing seemed to have shifted into brown as it'd been exposed to massive amounts of blood recently – but as the boy's blue eyes lingered on his teammates and their obvious injuries, something shifted.

Commonly tanned skin turned black, innocently blue eyes glowed golden, and something in the back of Orochimaru's mind began chanting _Run away runawayrunaway run away!_

This was very odd, because the boy was clearly inexperienced, and he'd been the dead-last of the Academy, and quite frankly the only time Orochimaru had felt that sudden impulse in the last few years was when he'd gotten into a fight with Itachi. And Itachi was on a completely different level in comparison to some genin brat.

Then there were suddenly a few hundreds of the orange-clad blonds, and they all began chanting. Everyone used different words, but their eyes were all filled with the same compressed fury and hatred and anger and protectiveness and guilt and _desire to kill_.

He only realized that two of the blond's clones had kawarimi'd with the Uchiha and the pink-haired girl when he saw the two of them hidden behind the lines of chanting blonds.

Not being exactly sure what kind of attack would require chanting – possibly some manner of sacred art from one of the temples or something – but fairly certain that so many clones utilizing it on him would most likely be unpleasant, Orochimaru carefully sank into the ground and sent a mud-clone to distract the clones so that he could place the Cursed Seal on the young Uchiha and be on his way already.

What happened instead was insane.

Chaos, destruction, pain, _wrongness_, exploded through the world as he tried to sink into the earth, and something attacked him. No, not _something_, the _earth_ attacked him. It saw him, it found him, it rejected his control over it, and it fought back.

The chanting from the clones reached a crescendo, and then the world exploded into colors, and pain and agony and the sudden realization that whilst kawarimi was a wonderful jutsu to know, it wasn't much use when everything you tried to replace yourself with was being annihilated along with you.

Of course, he'd readied his resurrection technique that allowed him to recover from things like having his head cut off, but for some reason it kept malfunctioning, either because the bombardment had yet to stop meaning that another body simply joined the first one in being annihilated in the wave of destruction, or something made the chakra that it relied upon flicker oddly.

His resurrection technique wouldn't work right, he couldn't escape, and he couldn't block it. He was being killed by a genin. A rookie genin who'd been the dead-last of his class was killing the infamous Orochimaru of the Sannin.

It was impossible. Yet that was what was happening.

Desperate, he activated his final form, the snake that he'd been forced to twist his soul into in order to perfect his immortality technique.

The gigantic white snake was not killed as easily as his regular flesh had been, allowing him a moment to reorient himself and find a way to fight back against the blond and his clones.

Something landed on his nose.

The white in the boy's eyes had turned black, and the blue iris was indeed golden. The boy's suddenly dark skin was at this distance easily seen covered in tattoos, glowing tattoos. And he was smiling, a cold and utterly merciless smile.

"Complexio!" The blond uttered a single word, and again the world twisted painfully.

The last thought that ran through Orochimaru's mind was quite simply: _But he's just a dead-last rookie genin._

XXX

Naruto had known immediately that the man in front of him was out of his league.

But he'd have to fight him anyway, so his best shot at it would be overwhelming force right from the get-go.

A hundred clones, all chanting the spells for whatever big explosion they could think of aimed at the Grass-nin. Most used ice and darkness, but there was also fire, lightning, wind, spirit, light, water, and earth all joining together into a chaotic mess of magical discharge.

He'd of course immediately dragged his teammates out of the line of fire, because he knew that in his edgy state he'd never really be able to _not_ accidentally overload his spells, meaning that his aim would be beyond awful and well into the suicidal ranges.

There was a reason that he was having his clones chant the spells, rather than stand and chant along with them. Getting exploded hurt.

So, without his teammates in risk of getting caught in the blasts, he'd released it all in the general direction of the Grass-nin, not knowing that his own terrible aim was the only reason that he hadn't merely killed a mud-clone, rather than actually hurt Orochimaru himself.

It doesn't matter if you're hidden safely from view in a nearby bush when all bushes nearby are on fire.

But when the gigantic white snake – that smelled like rotting flesh and that looked like it was made up out of smaller snakes, rather than scales – appeared out of the explosions, Naruto knew that he was probably fighting something insanely out of his league and that he was lucky to have gotten that first hit in when he had.

Unfortunately, none of his spells seemed to do any real damage to the creature, and that meant that he'd have to attack it with something that wasn't technically _damaging_. The theory went a bit along the lines of how if you couldn't bludgeon someone to death by dropping a glacier on their heads, then it might be a viable tactic to simply drown them instead.

And the only non-attacking spell in Naruto's arsenal was the thing that he'd picked up when Eva had let a really cool technique slip by accident. She'd said something about it slowly corrupting the user until it turned them into a monster, but Naruto had thought that it looked cool, so he hadn't bothered listening particularly hard.

Beginning the incantation, and cheerfully ignoring the fact that Eva was grinding her teeth together in frustration over his recklessness, Naruto used the trees to launch himself onto the snake's nose.

He couldn't hurt it. Couldn't attack it. But the snake wasn't... flesh and blood... it was... something else, something that was shifted a little to the left of what creatures should be like. And if it didn't have a true body, but rather an energy that was continuously keeping it from dissipating somehow, then that energy could be absorbed.

A cold smile flitting across his lips, Naruto finished the spell. "Complexio!"

XXX

Eva blinked stupidly at the gigantic white snake that suddenly appeared in Naruto's mindscape.

Or rather, inside of the _cage_ inside of Naruto's mindscape.

"Well... what do you know. Maybe the brat has his uses after all..." Eva trailed off, a smile filled with evil anticipation of sadistic violence creeping dangerously across her lips.

The Kyuubi watched the newest addition to its prison, and in a rare show of camaraderie towards a living creature, bowed its head briefly before getting ready to ignore its pleads for mercy.

Hey, it might pity the snake, but it wasn't about to put its neck on the line for something that could distract the sadistic monster that shared its cage from its own weakened self. It wasn't an idiot after all.

XXX

When Anko realized that her old teacher was there, in the Exams, already infiltrating the Forest of Death, she rushed towards the sounds of the most violent battle, the battle that would hopefully expose Orochimaru for being one of the Sannin rather than a genin.

Originally, she hadn't been entirely certain of where she ought to go, but then the explosions started. The explosions that made it sound as if someone was trying to level the entirety of the Training Ground 44 to the ground.

On arrival however, she didn't find the missing-nin chuckling darkly at her as he was surrounded by the bodies of dead genin. Instead, she found the orange-clad blond who talked about 'Eva' standing some distance away from his teammates.

His teammates were clearly roughened up, and their eyes were wide to a level that she'd only seen very very rarely on another human being.

The blond himself however... he was standing in the middle of the destruction, surrounded by some kind of disgusting mass of snakes writhing in their death, with strange tattoos lingering on his skin.

Then the blond turned his face towards her, and she felt herself shying away from the inhumanely golden eyes.

"Oh! Crazy fishnet-lady!" The boy exclaimed, surprised. "What are you doing here?"

Anko, who'd been just about ready to attack the boy whose eyes reminded her eerily of Orochimaru's, suddenly stopped at the curious innocence in his tone. "I'm looking for Orochimaru." She explained instead, her eyes following him suspiciously.

"Eh? Orochi-what?" The boy tilted his head, but before she could explain it, he suddenly nodded. "Oh, the snake-guy. Why didn't she just say so?" He asked himself. "Whatever. Don't worry crazy fishnet-lady, I Complexio'd him." He grinned with a certain proud smugness, before suddenly frowning. "What do you mean 'Complexio'd isn't proper grammar'? It makes sense, doesn't it? Then it's proper grammar!" He defended himself.

"Kid, what the hell are you talking about?" Anko interrupted the crazy kid.

"Eh? Well, Eva keeps complaining about my grammar, but language is about being understood, right? So why should that stuff matter if it can be understood?" He explained the argument that he'd been having with himself.

"What the hell is a 'Complexio'?" She demanded, gritting her teeth angrily at the boy.

"It's an absorption technique, built around the concept of absorbing a spells, or ninjutsu I suppose. It was designed to take in a technique and transform yourself into the essence of that technique, but I think it's a bit more complicated than that." He scratched his head. "Anyway, he turned into a giant snake-thing after I'd exploded him for a few minutes, and since my spells didn't work, I figured I'd hit him with something that wasn't based around _hurting_ him. So I absorbed him instead. Eva says that it only worked because he was using some kind of corruption-technique to keep himself alive when jumping in between bodies, and that the only reason I wasn't eaten by him when he was absorbed was because she was awesomely powerful and killed him." He paused, as if listening to something. "Well, is _still_ killing him, technically. But he was pretty much doomed from the moment when he appeared _inside_ of the cage rather than outside of it. Now he just has to get too broken to be entertaining, and then he'll die."

Anko blinked, trying to wrap her head around what he'd just said.

"Let me see if I've gotten this straight... _You_ were the reason that half the forest exploded?" She asked, and upon receiving an enthusiastic nod from the blond, continued in a slightly dazed tone. "Then, Orochimaru turned into a snake, and wasn't affected by the explosions. So you used an absorption-jutsu for ninjutsu that worked on him by chance, and managed to pull him into your mindscape, where he's now being tortured to death for the entertainment of this 'Eva'?"

"She's allowed to torture people who annoy her, it says so in her contract." The boy explained in a serious voice.

Pinching her eyes shut and rubbing her temples in an effort to resist the sudden headache that was forming, Anko tried to think of what she ought to do next.

A rookie genin had fulfilled her epic quest for vengeance towards her former teacher, and was now having that same teacher tortured to death for the entertainment of something that apparently _wasn't_ the Kyuubi – she'd been briefed by Kakashi when she'd asked about it.

A part of her wanted to punch the kid in the face for stealing her thunder, another wanted to kiss him most thoroughly as a reward for finally ridding her of that constant nagging worry that her teacher would return and ruin what remained of her life, but mostly she was just suddenly feeling quite exhausted.

Slumping down to sit, she stared curiously at the genin who'd just by his lonesome defeated Orochimaru of the Sannin, when she suddenly had an idea.

"Hey kid, that 'Eva'-person, can you ask her to get some information for us? I mean, he was a missing-nin and kind of left a lot of bad things in his wake, so it'd be nice to know." She scratched her head. "It'd be especially nice to find anything about the removal of Cursed Seals... you know, on a personal basis." She let her collar dip low enough that the seal on her neck became visible to the blond.

The boy looked thoughtful. "I'll try, Eva can be kind of insistent." Then there was a pause, during which he winced a few times, before he opened his mouth again. "She says that she's ripping his experiences out of his mind, and that she'll save some for the Yamanaka to dig through."

And boy wasn't that the greatest relief that she'd ever heard in her entire life?

"Thank you." She told the boy, her head dipping into a deep bow from her place on the ground.

XXX

Kakashi whimpered quietly as the ground shook from the explosions coming from the Forest of Death.

He knew that he should've been faster in registering his vacation. He'd _known_ it.

The Third raised a single eyebrow at him.

"That wouldn't be Naruto, ripping apart the entirety of Training Ground 44 right now, would it?" He asked him in a deceptively calm tone.

Kakashi whimpered again, instinctively searching for escape routes that he knew he'd never be able to use because the Hokage was staring at him, before nodding miserably.

"I see..." The man leaned back, lighting his pipe with a simple technique that he'd long since mastered in every shape and form. "It'll be expensive, replacing all those trees..." He mused without a hint of any punishment to come. "I wonder... how much have you saved up, Kakashi-chan?"

Kakashi nearly broke down crying, because he hadn't been called _that_ since he'd become chunin, and it was his first clue that something unimaginably horrible would happen.

"I hear that Academy teachers have a fairly decent salary... but even then... it'd probably take years to pay for all that damage..." The Hokage hummed thoughtfully around his pipe, before again turning to face Kakashi. "For your sake, I do hope that you've saved up a lot more than I suspect. It'd be a shame to see one of our elite jounin stuck for years, babysitting Academy students, wouldn't it?"

Kakashi finally broke down and began sobbing uncontrollably. He'd known. He'd known that allowing Naruto to learn super-powered attacks would be a horrible thing. He'd _known_.

But he had never imagined that it would be _this_ horrible.

XXX

Sasuke had been shocked at learning that his teammate was the Jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi. He'd been even more shocked at the thought that he was apparently also the Jinchuuriki of some immortal girl called 'Eva' who'd gotten caught in the sealing process.

That, however didn't mean that he couldn't adapt to this new information. For example, he knew that Jinchuuriki was considered Weapons of Mass Destruction, being virtually unstoppable on a battlefield, and adding Naruto to their ranks really helped him with his recent issues with seeing the blond dead-last catching up to him.

It was one thing to lose to an enemy that the dead-last defeated. It was another thing entirely to lose to an opponent that an enraged Jinchuuriki defeated. Which meant that he wasn't hopelessly lagging behind, but rather coming into contact with situation where his teammate's nature was horribly effective; namely, life-and-death struggles.

The Academy was based around a point-system as far as taijutsu was concerned, counting the amount of times you were hit, rather than the actual damage that you took from such a hit, and oriented itself towards low-powered jutsu in an effort to make it somewhat fair towards the civilian-born. All of this meant that when a Jinchuuriki whose greatest skill lay in taking hits without flinching, and causing Mass Destruction... well, suddenly their fights wouldn't be interrupted whenever someone managed to punch them, but only be interrupted when someone actually managed to put them down and force them to stay there, which was insanely hard to do without resorting to extreme violence when Jinchuuriki were involved.

It was basically that Sasuke and his speed-based taijutsu had been perfectly suited for the Academy, whilst Naruto and his endurance had been extremely badly suited for it; and that now that they were out of there, Sasuke was only generally effective in comparison to Naruto's extreme effectiveness of being too stubborn to fall down.

This all meant that Sasuke could breathe a sigh of relief because trying to measure up to Naruto's current rate of apparent growth was stupid, and that he should instead find someone else more 'normal' to measure his current abilities to.

Thus, he'd gone into the chunin exam with an intrigued smile on his face, and a reasonably cheerful outlook on his place in the world.

Of course, when the blast of air blew his teammate away during the second part of the Exam, well, he got a little bit worried.

That worry increased very very rapidly as his suspicions that the Grass-nin wasn't a genin at all began to grow.

Struggling desperately against his opponent seemed to do little, other than perhaps entertain the obviously sadistic non-genin, thus at least keeping Sasuke from getting killed out of boredom.

So he was unimaginably relieved when Naruto arrived and began slinging huge explosions at the non-genin. Because whilst he couldn't deal with some monster just yet, Naruto would've been able to do _something_ at least, even before he'd begun training with those weird ninjutsu that he called 'spells'.

And for once, he could readily admit that he might've worn the same face of shocked awe as Sakura had when the enemy turned into a gigantic white snake, and Naruto simply killed it.

All in all, by the time that he realized that he could spot an Earth Scroll to go with their own Heaven Scroll in the mass of dead still-wriggling snakes, his attitude towards the whole situation could easily be summed up as: "Hn."

"What was that, teme?" Naruto glanced over at him from where he'd been talking to the crazy fishnet-lady that was a proctor.

Sasuke raised the Earth Scroll in response, smirking slightly. "Looks like you didn't burn _everything_."

Naruto's jaw dropped open, before he started laughing. "Yes! Tower, here we come!"

XXX

Iruka, as well as all other ninja present in the Tower when the explosions started, had all been sitting on needles ever since.

First, there'd been an alert stating that a missing-nin – with a high likelihood of it being Orochimaru of the Sannin – had infiltrated the Exam, and that forces were being sent out to contain the damage that he'd be able to cause.

Then someone had begun trying to demolish half of the Forest of Death, using powerful jutsu that none of those currently in the Tower could recall having seen before.

Then it was over, and everything became eerily quiet in the aftermath.

So when, a few hours later, Iruka felt someone activate the Summoning Seal, he was a bit nervous about who could've both braved through the explosions, as well as gained another team's Scroll in such a short amount of time.

Therefore, he was understandably surprised to see Team 7 greeting him happily when he appeared.

Sakura looked tired, dirty, and – except for her broken arm – appeared to be only slightly roughened up. Sasuke looked exhausted, dirty, and whilst he sported a few obvious injuries, didn't seem to be in need of a medic. Naruto looked a bit sleepy through his usual enthusiastic cheerfulness, was splattered from head to toe in gore, and didn't have a single scratch on him.

"N-Naruto! What happened to you?!" Iruka exclaimed, worried that his student might've been horrible traumatized by people dying.

"Snake exploded." Naruto wrinkled his nose, as he glanced down at his gore-drenched clothes. "Should probably have held back more."

Feeling his jaw drop a little at the casualness in the usually boisterous blond, Iruka hurriedly shook it off. "A snake? How could a snake do... _that_?"

Naruto grinned happily up at him before answering in a voice slightly muddled from sleepiness. "It was really really big."

"I bet the second one was bigger." Sasuke commented, sounding vaguely amused.

Naruto beamed happily at his teammate for praising his abilities, however inadvertently. "Yeah, but that one didn't explode, did it?"

"Thank god for small mercies." Sakura muttered with a shudder. "It was disgusting enough to _look_ at... I do _not_ want that... 'stuff' on my clothes... I'd rather burn them and go naked."

Naruto made a thoughtful noise. "I wonder if that's why Eva-... Oww! Dammit! Quit doing that you loli-grandma! Oww! I said, quit it!" He grabbed his head, wincing oddly as he spoke.

"Don't piss off the voices in your head, dobe. It can't be good for your health." Sasuke commented helpfully, smirking.

"Bite me, teme!" Naruto growled back, eyes still narrowed in pain from whatever had happened when he'd spoken earlier.

All in all, Iruka was hopelessly confused.

XXX

The first time Naruto saw Gaara was not in the Tower. The first time he saw Gaara was mixed in with the crowd gathering before the First Exam. The first time he _noticed_ Gaara however, was in the Tower.

His first reaction to actually noticing the sleep-deprived redhead was perhaps kind of obvious in hindsight.

"Why do _I_ have to kill him preemptively? It's _your_ contract, why can't _you_ kill him?" Naruto demanded with a frown.

All surrounding him slowly turned towards the boy who'd just petulantly argued against killing one of them.

Gaara's siblings – with survival instincts honed from being in the homicidal Jinchuuriki's presence – quickly backed away from the boy that was still drenched from head to toe in snake-gore. Not that anyone not on his team really knew that the horrible mess of blood originated from something non-human.

Gaara himself immediately latched onto the fact that this person was talking to himself about killing. No, not talking. Arguing with himself.

Maybe he had a mother who demanded blood too? Perhaps he would validate Gaara's existence?

"Oi, Eva-person. No killing people. We'd get disqualified." Sasuke helpfully pointed out to the creature living within his teammate's seal.

"Should've caught up with him in the Forest and killed him there." Sakura pointed out with a dismissive wave of her hand, the pain-killers she'd received for her broken arm leaving her oddly upbeat about the world.

"See." Naruto smiled brightly as he nodded. "That means that I can't kill him, which means that unless you manage to get the Hokage to sign onto your contract and accept that you're allowed to kill redheads anywhere and anytime, you'll just have to live with him remaining with the living. For now at least."

Kankuro, not having _quite_ as finely honed survival instincts as his sister, and by now hopelessly confused about what was going on, finally decided to interject. "Wait. You want to kill him because he's a redhead?"

Naruto blinked, turning towards him with a confused expression. "Well, honestly I don't care either way, but Eva's going to kick up a fuss if I don't somehow manage to kill off the first redhead we encountered since she managed to write in a clause in her contract saying that she can kill all redhead's preemptively."

The Sand-siblings didn't know what to say about that.

On the one hand, apparently the kid was as insane as Gaara. On the other, he didn't seem ready to slaughter them all in an orgy of blood, despite the gore splattered all over his clothes.

"Whatevs, I'm gonna take a nap." Sakura interrupted the Sand siblings' thought process with a yawn and began moving away, randomly getting distracted by walls that for some reason kept shifting whenever she wasn't paying attention.

The rest of Team 7 hurried after he, lest she went to sleep in a room that wasn't their assigned one.

XXX

Gathering in the big hall on the final day of the Exam, a well-rested Team 7 cheerfully greeted the recently arrived rookies. The exhausted-looking rookies who were obviously battling their own disbelief at Team 7 having made it there much faster than they.

Then the Hokage told them that there'd be preliminary matches to decide who'd be allowed to fight in the arena for the final part of the Exam.

As withdrawing from the preliminaries wouldn't affect their teammates a few people decided to back out for various reasons. In most cases, it was because of some manner of injury that they'd sustained during the second part of the Exam.

Sakura didn't back out however, despite her obviously broken arm and the fact that she was still on pain medication. Heck, the fact that she _was_ on pain medication was probably the reason that she didn't bother with such wuss-ass behavior like chickening-out like a doorknob right before the good stuff with explosions.

Sakura on pain medications was... very peculiar... but also hugely entertaining.

Sasuke made a mental note to always carry some manner of pain medication on any mission in the future, as he enjoyed her attitude a lot more when she was too busy being high on those to whine about how Sasuke should 'kiss the pain away' like she'd done on a few previous occasions.

He hated whining.

Naruto, on the other hand, was making a mental note on how if pain medication could make people react like that, it'd probably be really funny to give them to someone as a prank. But, fortunately for Konoha's future health, he'd read the warning labels on the box and knew better than to give it to someone who might react adversely due to: previous medication, pregnancy, allergies, or mental unsoundness – whatever that was. This of course meant that he'd have to first sneak into the hospital and break into the records that were kept there in an effort to minimize the risk of such a thing happening when he pranked them with the pills.

Regardless, none of the rookie genin withdrew from the Exam, and so the preliminaries began.

XXX

It was nearly pathetically easy for Sasuke to beat down the older genin, despite how he could apparently absorb chakra. Having a single trick – that wasn't even all that useful – and seemingly relying on it endlessly? That was just a quick route to getting yourself killed.

Naruto also had an easy time of it, much to Kiba's dismay, as even the weakest of Naruto's 'spells' were... violent. Very very violent. And Naruto had never been all that good at holding back, which meant that the first thing he said had been really good advice for the Inuzuka.

"Kiba, dodge like hell, because otherwise, you might seriously die."

Though, admittedly, it'd taken the other genin a bit of time to realize that Naruto hadn't been bragging. A bit of time that nearly took his head off.

Sakura on the other hand...

Sakura not only had a broken arm, but was also slightly disoriented from her behavior-altering pain medication. Ino, on the other hand, had only recently arrived at the Tower, and was still both tired and covered in scratches and bruises.

It was proved a strangely even match, until Ino hit her opponent with a mind-switch jutsu, only to find herself in a drugged body. Apparently, the shock at the contrast between the state of being drugged and not-being-drugged gave an opening for Sakura's mind to fight back.

That Sakura fought back by wobbling over to Ino and kicking her ruthlessly whilst she was still disoriented from returning to her own body, was acknowledged as perhaps a little bit mean but also very much a sign of professionalism.

The ninja-job and the values it imparted on its practitioners was generally considered by civilians as a little bit awkward at times.

It made perfect sense to kick even a kind-of-enemy whilst they were down, since it was a way to make sure that they wouldn't get back up and cause any more trouble.

It _was_ however, considered a bit strange to kick an enemy when they were down whilst cursing about wuss-asses who couldn't take their happy-pills and shouldn't be such buzz-kills.

Sasuke's mental note to carry pain medication for future missions was during this show rapidly climbing in priority. Naruto's mental note of pranking people was shifted slightly as his self-preservation decided to consider his own safety when drugging people.

Of the other Konoha genin, only Shikamaru, Neji – who was an ass – and Shino managed to pass. All three of the Suna genin passed, and only one of the Oto genin.

Naruto was happy to learn that he'd be able to get revenge for Hinata's struggle against her cousin in the upcoming tournament, Sasuke was understandably nervous at the thought of going up against someone who could beat down Rock Lee like that, and Sakura was leaning against a wall and taking a well-deserved nap.

Just because the drugs made her blunt enough that she didn't annoy people with whining, didn't mean that she actually became professional when she was on them.

XXX

**A/n: Originally, I ran out of juice for this one like 5,000 words in, but then I started writing on it again after god knows how long and well... it was finally completed at a bit over 25,000, so yeah. That escalated.**

**Anyway, because of this, the mood from the beginning may be a bit different from the mood later on in the series. It's mostly chaos and stupidity.**

**There will be a second chapter, followed by a final chapter as an epilogue.**


	2. Chapter 2

Ice and Darkness ch 2

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

XXX

"Umm... sensei?" Naruto stared at the man in front of him in confusion. "What do you mean that you can't train any of us?"

Kakashi suppressed both the urge to sob helplessly as well as the urge to punch Naruto in the face for being irresponsible and getting him into trouble as his guardian. The fact that he managed to suppress it well enough that all that emerged was a subtle twitch in his eye, and a slightly deranged smile that most certainly didn't reach his eyes, just proved that there was a reason Gai kept calling him hip and cool.

"I can't train any of you, because I've been reassigned by the Hokage." He carefully did not state that he'd be stuck with brats even more childishly frustrating than Naruto could ever be, lest the boy take it as a challenge.

"Eh? But why'd the old man do that? You're supposed to be our teacher!" Naruto proclaimed loudly.

"Technically, I'm also your semi-guardian ever since I passed you as a team, meaning that I can be held accountable for your actions." Kakashi pointed out to the blond.

Sakura stared at him with a confused expression, glancing briefly towards Naruto and then back, before suddenly beginning to snicker helplessly. "Kaka-sensei got in trouble~!" She sang happily.

Naruto just stared at his still-on-pain-killers teammate, not understanding what she was saying.

"But Naruto beat down an S-Class missing-nin by his lonesome, shouldn't Kakashi be praised for that?" Sasuke objected in bewilderment.

"He also decimated an important training ground." Kakashi noted dryly. "A training ground that despite its reputation is both well-used and expensive to repair. So, due to Naruto exploding so much of it and then not suppressing the fires those explosions started, I'm being forced to pay for the mission to return it to its original condition as punishment for my genin's irresponsibility. That I'm being reassigned on top of that... well, that's mostly sadism I think."

He paused in his explanation to mutter something that sounded an awful lot like "and because I was caught trying to run away from my responsibility by taking a vacation when I was supposed to offer support to my students" but it was hard to tell, and he couldn't possibly have actually _done_ that, could he? Even if he _was_ chronically tardy, and kind of irresponsible as far as his teaching-techniques went, running away for a vacation would still have been a bit much, right?

Sighing, and relaxing a little in his resignation, the jounin continued in a more audible voice. "I'll be able to get out of it pretty quickly, since Anko now owes me a few favors, and I can probably write off some of the expenses from Orochimaru's bounty, but it's still a punishment that means I won't be able to train either of you for the third part of the Exam."

"B-But that's not _fair_!" Naruto complained, looking horribly betrayed.

Kakashi's face turned serious as he looked into his student's eyes. "If there's anything you learn from this, let it be that all your actions has consequences, and even perfect victories can cause problems later on." Then, once he observed that Naruto was actually listening to his advice, he smiled at him. "And it's not like you won't be able to contact me if you need to ask something, since I'll be inside of the Village the whole time."

"Doing what?" Sasuke asked curiously.

Kakashi's smile slipped away as he turned towards the black-haired boy. "I'll be serving under a madman who willingly spends times with monsters... so many little monsters... all gathered in one place... being horrible..." He sniffled a little bit. "And he teaches them how to kill things..." He shook his head disbelievingly. "Why would he do that? Why would anyone do that? They're little monsters... crawling everywhere... and he hates Icha Icha... How can he hate Icha Icha?" He asked, sounding unsettlingly distraught at the thought of someone disliking his favorite porn-series.

Naruto stared at him in incomprehension, Sasuke looked a little bit nervous at the thought of his teacher sniffling helplessly – probably because he didn't want to try and comfort the older man, especially since he'd be the only one amongst his teammates who'd have any idea on how to act nicely at this time, since Sakura was high and Naruto was socially retarded, which was a horrifying thought all on its own – and Sakura's eyes were growing round as her lips began to twitch into a gleeful grin.

"Don't worry Kaka-sensei, we'll make sure to visit you at the Academy!" She happily assured him.

Kakashi ignored his other two students spluttering at this new information of what assignment he'd been describing, and stared into the sadistic depths of Sakura's eyes with a sense of looming apprehension.

He really wished he'd been able to sneak off on that vacation when he'd had the chance.

XXX

Naruto wasn't sure what he was supposed to be learning, really.

It would be great to have more ninjutsu... but he already had his spells, and considering how they'd made short work of an S-Class missing-nin, Naruto was pretty sure that – as a genin – learning even more destructive attacks in order to explode people was perhaps a little bit extreme.

Oh, he most certainly wouldn't turn down someone who wanted to teach him such things, but he felt that a lack of explosions was not his main weakness at this time.

No, Naruto's weakness was if anything the fact that his attacks exploded _too much_, as Kakashi's punishment working alongside Iruka could so obviously attest to.

Unfortunately, Naruto couldn't really rein in the destructiveness of his spells, which meant that – unless he wanted a lot of things to explode – he was forced to avoid using spells.

Again, this posed a problem to the blond due to how spells were actually just about the only thing that he could utilize effectively. That and his clones.

Not even Magia Erebea was a good idea to use in the upcoming tournament – in no small part due to Eva threatening him with grievous harm should he attempt to use it without there being a dire need for it.

Thus, Naruto was forced to turn away from his precious spell-casting in an effort to find an advantage elsewhere. Which was why he'd been so utterly disappointed at Kakashi being unable to assist him.

"Oi, idiot." Eva called to him from the other side of the bars. "If you're going to fight without spells, you'll need to learn how to throw a punch."

Naruto looked up from where he'd morosely been contemplating the water-covered floor. "I know how to do that!" He glared at the vampire.

Eva raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Really?"

Naruto opened his mouth for a biting retort to her obvious disbelief, but paused. "You're saying... I still need to learn that stuff?" He decided to not argue against her insinuation.

Shaking her head at the blond kid's hesitant curiosity, Eva waved him over. "I can't leave the cage, but you should be able to pass between the bars without issue, and I picked up some stuff from this annoying old guy who was pretty good with fighting hand-to-hand."

Naruto blinked, a little bit surprised at the thought that the young-looking Eva could actually fight on a physical level, but he'd long since learned not to question the vampire's proficiency in any field and so kept his mouth shut and made his way over to her.

Orochimaru the Snake-thing had – thankfully – long since disappeared from the mindscape, taking his ultra-creepy memories and techniques along with him as he died. Sure, they'd managed to keep enough stuff intact to give the Torture and Interrogation something to play with, but Naruto really didn't want the creepy nin inside of him. Even in the most metaphorical of ways.

It might've been cool to have the abilities of one of the Sannin, but it wasn't like Magia Erebea worked like that, and even if it _had_, it would've been annoying to know that his skills had only been stolen from another, rather than developed on his own.

XXX

Anko stared at the pink-haired brat standing in front of her.

"You want me do what?"

"I want you to teach me how to fight whilst drugged to my gills." Sakura repeated herself.

"Why the hell would you even want to _learn_ that?" Anko asked in morbid fascination.

Sakura suspiciously glanced over her shoulder, a slightly shifty look to her. "I've seen the way my teammates look at me. It's only a matter of time until they begin secretly slipping drugs into my food." A slightly hysterical giggle escaped from her lips. "There's no way I'm going on missions when I'm still running the risk of getting stabbed because I'm too drugged to fight when the enemy appears."

Anko opened her mouth to point out that if her teammates were honestly plotting on drugging her, then she should perhaps simply request a transfer on behalf of her personal safety, or something. But then she remembered that only wusses would chicken-out like that without first at least nailing one of the assholes in the balls.

"Sure, I'll teach you." She nodded. "It's always fun to have a legitimate reason for drugging people and then beating the tar out of them."

Sakura blinked, then her eyebrows slowly began to climb towards her hairline as her eyes widened in realization, before her shoulders finally slumped in defeat. "Well... fuck."

XXX

Sasuke took a deep breath and tried to ignore the whispers of the Academy students who were pointing at him.

Sakura had disappeared off somewhere after raiding the hospital for various pain medications, Naruto appeared to be meditating over ramen with utmost seriousness, and quite frankly Sasuke didn't really feel comfortable with trying to figure out how either of his teammates were preparing for the Exam.

Sakura, because showing any interest in the girl whatsoever ran the risk of causing the girl to revert in to fangirlism. And Naruto, because he had an evil vampire stuck inside of him – that curiously enough apparently didn't always bother with wearing clothing for some reason – and was meditating over _ramen_ which all on its own made Sasuke's head ache in a way that made him seriously question even the tiny amount of hope he had left for humanity.

Unfortunately, his teammates and their teacher were the only people he was actually on speaking-terms with, which meant that he needed to get Kakashi to either teach him personally – which was impossible due to the Academy students that the man had been assigned as punishment for not keeping a better leash on Naruto's destructiveness – or have Kakashi assign a teacher to him.

Which was why he was at the Academy, trying to convince the jounin that this was something that he ought to do.

Sasuke finally gave up on curtailing his response, simply shaking his head with a sigh, as he stared at the grown man crying from where he'd crawled into a corner.

It wasn't that he didn't understand why Kakashi viewed being assigned to the Academy as a cruel and unusual punishment – because he most certainly did, and he hated kids – it was just that the sight of an elite jounin being turned into a whimpering mess within the first hour of teaching a class of twenty students was... heavily discouraging.

"Kakashi-sensei. I'm going to be up against a homicidal Jinchuuriki with a perfect defense against pretty much every attack in existence." He paused as that statement failed to cause a reaction from his teacher. "And... I'd kind of been planning on... you know... _surviving_ the chunin exams at least." He finally admitted, frowning at being forced to being so honest about his motivations.

Kakashi made a dull noise of crushed dreams. "The little demons have _allergies_." He mumbled conspiratorially to himself. "And they want me to _cure_ them."

Resisting the urge to kick the jounin repeatedly and then lit fire to his bloodied corpse, Sasuke took another deep breath and, in a horrifyingly desperate plea for survival, turned towards the creatures that had reduced the man into such a state.

The Academy students stared with wide eyes as the genin – after not receiving a response from their new teacher, whom he apparently knew – bowed to them.

"I'll be assisting Kakashi-sensei in his teaching." He declared, his suddenly red eyes swirling oddly as he motioned towards the whimpering shape of the jounin. "Please show me how this happened."

Because if the Sharingan could copy whatever it was that had caused _this_, then perhaps he wouldn't even have to attempt to lose gracefully in his fight against Gaara. Maybe he could even _win_.

XXX

Sasuke stared at the man in front of him that was blocking his entrance into the Arena.

"What." Came his cold query at the man's dismissal of the tickets he'd provided for the class of Academy students.

"I don't care who you think you are, but we're not letting a bunch of snot-nosed brats into the audience of the Finals under the teacher-reserved-seats mentioned in the rules for a reason like, 'because they helped you'." The man sneered.

Sasuke's eyes narrowed dangerously, before he whirled on his heel to discuss this new obstacle with the great tactical minds of class 2-A.

The man he left behind carefully ignored the strange feeling of impending doom that was for some reason settling in his guts.

XXX

Sakura belatedly glanced around for Sasuke as she and the other participants moved into the stands, leaving Neji and Naruto behind on the Arena floor.

The Uchiha wasn't present however, which ought to have worried her.

Thankfully, she had a whole bunch of bottles with liquid courage in her backpack, and was more than happy for an excuse to empty them.

So, cheerfully ignoring both her teammate's match on the floor below, as well as her other teammate's lack of presence when he really ought to have been there by now, Sakura enthusiastically opened her bottle and began humming a drinking song that Anko-sensei had taught her.

Considering that the drinking-song was both crude, rude, vulgar, and an insult to everything with a pulse, the fact that she thought it was a really funny song really ought to have been extremely worrying to most of her fellow contestants.

Unfortunately, her fellow contestants couldn't hear the lyrics, and as such were not able to ready themselves for the fact that the drunk girl was apparently a homicidal maniac with a fetish for torture.

Not that she actually _was_ any of that, mind you. She might be a mean drunk, but she just thought that the song was _funny_. A belief which could easily be traced back to the fact that she'd simply been spending far too much time around a certain Anko Mitarashi as of late.

XXX

Naruto had considered simply bombarding Neji from a safe distance with spells.

The advantage to such a tactic would've been an easily achieved victory against someone who – according to the Academy grading system – ought to be completely out of his league.

The disadvantages would've been as follows: extreme collateral damage – and with the audience taken into consideration this was very much a potentially career-ending consequence – a lack of subtlety – chunin were supposed to be strategic and not simply explode everything that moved – and the general lack of... well, the lacking in the 'punch the asshole in the face'-department.

It would've been easier to simply blast the Hyuuga away and continue on to the next round, but it wouldn't necessarily have been the right course of action.

Naruto wanted to prove to Neji that Hinata had been correct, and that Fate couldn't simply be decided upon and then ignored. Fate was a thing to be fought and wrestled with until it gave you the outcome that you desired. And the only way he could prove that to the asshole was by showing him how his precious jyuuken was useless and pointless and that whatever 'fate' the boy believed to be an absolute fact could be turned on its head as long as you were stubborn enough.

There were two ways that he could achieve that through. The first one was the aspect of pitting the prodigy against an enemy against who the jyuuken alone wouldn't be enough to achieve victory. And the second would be to use the very same jyuuken that he prided himself on mastering, to beat his ass to the ground.

Naruto didn't know the jyuuken, but he also knew that if he started slinging spells around in a way that proved that Neji couldn't utilize his precious Kekkai Genkai, then Neji wouldn't really have the time to reflect upon what was happening until he woke up in a hospital bed a week later.

Therefore, Naruto would not use his spells during his fight with Neji.

However, the jyuuken _was_ insanely good at being used towards an opponent in hand-to-hand, what with how the chakra it inserted at the merest touch into the opponents network would so utterly disrupt the other person's ability to continue fighting.

The Jinchuuriki might've become quite skilled at hand-to-hand combat during his constant practices with Eva inside of the seal, but a master of that peculiar style of hers, he was not. No, if he fought fairly, he would get his ass kicked. Simple as that.

Which is why he decided to cheat.

The question on how he was supposed to do so, had been gnawing at the back of his mind for quite some time before he'd confronted Eva with his solution.

She'd been pissed at him at first, then – after a very long time of yelling, shouting, cursing, and declaring that he was probably a redhead in disguise – Eva grudgingly admitted that he had a point, before starting to laugh.

The plan had been refined from the original, and had reached the point where he'd seriously wondered if perhaps Eva might secretly be a former prankster herself.

Neji sneered condescendingly at him from his position. "Fate has declared that you shall be defeated."

Naruto stared at him for a long moment. "So you're god? Because I don't think Fate really gives a rat's ass about us normal people, especially not enough to _inform_ us about what it has in store for us. I'm pretty sure it's actually a sadist getting its kicks from seeing our surprise, or something." He tilted his head briefly as if listening to something. "You wouldn't happen to know a guy called 'Murphy', would you? Eva wants to punch him in the balls."

"Your words mean nothing in the face of your Fate. Your defeat is inevitable." And then Neji rushed him, and the fight began.

It was easy to see that Naruto was outmatched. Neji was faster, more accurate, more experienced, and more skilled.

It didn't take long until Naruto's arm fell uselessly to his side, and from then on it only got worse.

His one remaining arm now being outnumbered as well as outclassed, quickly proved itself virtually useless against Neji's systematic attacks and incredible speed. Soon, it too surrendered to gravity.

By now, most of the audience were shaking their heads at the genin's foolishness at engaging a Hyuuga in hand-to-hand combat, and Naruto was forced to hurriedly retreat from Neji's ruthless advance in an effort to keep himself from being completely crippled.

There was no way that Neji would let up on his attacks, because it was better to deal with such foolishness with absolute power and utterly crush the opposition, rather than let them run around and pretend that they stood a chance against his skill.

Finally, an opportunity presented itself, and Neji's hand hit the blond genin in the neck, in a spot that would paralyze him completely.

Naruto's fist smacked into Neji's unguarded jaw with a resounding crack, as the boy was lifted from his feet at the sudden impact.

The pitying sighs of the audience abruptly cut off as they stared at the impossibility that had just happened.

Naruto rolled his shoulders, scratching casually at his neck as he stared at the downed prodigy that lay in the dusty ground before him. "Oh, did I mention that the jyuuken won't work on me? No? Well, I guess that's just Fate for you. It's not like you could ever even hope to defeat a dead-last whose only redeeming feature is the inability for the jyuuken to have an effect on him, right?"

With a wet-sounding cough, Neji spat out a bit of blood and began to crawl back onto his feet.

Naruto, in a manner that made the judges take away points, simply stood there and let him continue rather than interrupt him by kicking him while he was down.

"Impossible." Neji declared with an odd gurgle that made Naruto wonder if he'd knocked a tooth loose. "You managed to re-open the tenketsu I shut down?"

"Even the most useless of us all have our tricks." Naruto pointed out with a small smirk.

Growling angrily, Neji launched himself towards him once more.

Naruto did his best to fend off the attacks of the Hyuuga prodigy, but once more lost control over both of his arms. Arms that Neji kept a careful eye on this time around.

Not wanting to exactly repeat his former tactic, Neji began to shut down the tenketsu in Naruto's torso and legs rather than attacking his neck.

Naruto's fist impacted against Neji's nose, causing a sickening crack as the bone within it broke against his knuckles.

Again Neji found himself dizzily clambering to his feet as Naruto stood watching.

"You-... You didn't re-open them..." Neji blinked stupidly at the genin in front of him.

"Really, you shouldn't just assume. It's rude." Naruto sniffed theatrically at the boy. "I'll have you know that I'm simply immune from the get-go." He waved one of his arms to demonstrate and then made it go completely slack as if he couldn't move it at all. "I've always been good with pranks." He grinned cheekily.

The section of the audience that had been claimed by the Hyuuga was utterly silent, as more than a few of them had lost their voices at the thought that someone had a Kekkai Genkai that actually made fighting them with the jyuuken impossible. It was, after all, an affront to their entire way of life.

"Why?" Neji gurgled through the blood leaking down his face.

Naruto shrugged. "Because it was the easiest way to achieve my goal."

"For victory?" Neji spat.

Sighing, Naruto shook his head. "To teach you." He glared at the Hyuuga in front of him. "To teach you what it means to be a failure, to stand against impossible odds." He tilted his head curiously. "So... how about it? Can you still rise to the challenge? Can you still push yourself to achieve your 'fated' victory?" His curiosity turned dark as swirling tattoos began to glow against his suddenly darkened skin. "Can you ruthlessly defeat me like you ruthlessly tried to kill your own cousin? The gentle and kindhearted girl who calls you 'nii-sama'?"

And, in that moment, the audience knew why Naruto had allowed the boy to climb to his feet without interference.

This fight wasn't about beating his opponent. It was about forcing the other boy to recognize that he'd gone too far. Way too far.

Perhaps foolishly, Neji decided that he wasn't going to have any sudden revelations in the middle of the Arena, and instead charged the boy with a roar.

So Naruto twisted and launched the boy straight into the ground without mercy, using his own momentum against him in a manner that Eva had long ago drilled into his head. Because whilst Neji was indeed better than him at fighting, the prodigy was also dizzy, bleeding, possibly concussed, and having trouble breathing due to both a fractured jaw and a broken nose. And Naruto was completely unharmed.

Neji's last thought before finally slipping into unconsciousness went somewhere along the lines of; _Is this fate?_

XXX

The Magia Erebea was a corrupting influence on the user. This was an absolute fact, which was why Eva had been so against the blond idiot using it.

However, Naruto was stubborn, idiotic, and horribly uncaring for the safety of his own humanity.

He wanted to beat Neji face-to-face, so he'd come up with a plan to do just that.

The jyuuken is based around the concept of forcibly injecting an opponent's tenketsu with foreign chakra, thereby blocking the chakra network and turning their limbs useless.

The Magia Erebea was designed around the concept of absorbing a spell into the very essence of the body and using that same essence to then power the user's attacks against their opponents.

Whilst originally only considered for absorbing the user's own spells, Negi Springfield had gone a step further and incorporated the aid of a magical circle in order to absorb the attacks of his enemies rather than his own.

This was what Naruto had been looking for.

Unfortunately, he couldn't exactly set up a gigantic magical circle around a ninja whose greatest pride was his ability to see everything around him. So Naruto had needed something a little bit removed from both the original technique, as well as Negi's adaptation of it.

In the end, Naruto had shown that idiocy can triumph genius, by simply admitting that the point was to keep the enemy's attacks from hitting _him_, not from hitting the Arena floor.

So he'd grabbed a permanent marker and ordered a clone to scribble out a magical circle across his back.

It wasn't big, it wasn't a permanent tattoo, and it couldn't absorb any attack of value really.

Except... the jyuuken was designed around _precision_, and that meant that a skilled user of that technique never used any strength at all. Which meant that the miniscule amount of 'spells' that his adaptation could actually absorb was suddenly exactly what was needed.

Through stubbornness and stupidity, Naruto created a technique specifically designed to make him invulnerable to the jyuuken. And with a bit of sneakiness to keep the charade of losing to the prodigy going, he actually managed to get an ambush in on the Hyuuga using it.

So whilst Evangeline didn't really approve of the usage of the corrupting technique – so easily recalling what it'd nearly done to even a spirit as strong as the one belonging to Negi Springfield – she had to admit to a small amount of smug pride at the sight of variation of her own technique being used so effectively by the blond.

XXX

Sakura stared confusedly at the Arena floor at the proctor's announcement of the next fight. "Wait... where did duckbutt go?"

Nearly everyone in the competitor's box turned to stare at her in a mixture of surprise and disbelief.

"Troublesome." Shikamaru muttered to himself as he realized that the pink-haired girl had indeed been drinking booze, which meant that her threat-level had increased.

"Did he he chicken-out?" Sakura made a disgusted face at the thought. "What kind of wuss-ass doorknobs do I have on my team, anyway?"

Again, everyone who heard her stared at her for a long silent moment.

Shikamaru slumped against the railing as he realized what was about to happen. "Troublesome."

"The match between Sasuke Uchiha and Gaara of the Sand has been postponed. Temari of the Sand and Shikamaru Nara, please report to the Arena floor for your match." The proctor's voice rang out.

Sakura tilted her head in thought. "So... he didn't chicken-out? Then what the hell is he doing?"

XXX

Sasuke grinned in evil anticipation as the members of 2-A moved into their positions.

They weren't allowed to take the seating reserved for the participants' teachers, and they didn't have either tickets or the ability to sneakily buy tickets from those already in the audience. Their only chance was to replace the ones in the audience directly.

And the only way to do that was by first disabling the ANBU.

Which was why they'd made a Plan.

Never underestimate the devious minds of children, for they are monsters who have not yet grown the fangs and muscles they need to defend themselves with, and have still managed to survive.

XXX

Sakura hummed a happy tune as she made her way down to the Arena floor for her own match, amused in the knowledge that at least one of the Suna-nin was a wuss-ass for chickening-out of his fight. Even if those bugs of Shino's were admittedly freaky as all hell.

She'd be up against the masked Oto-nin who could make people dizzy by missing them with his punches.

She might've been nervous about it, but she'd been happily devouring her liquid courage through the strategic boredom that had been Temari and Shikamaru's match. So, instead of worrying, she was considering whether or not she could beat him quickly enough to manage to take a nap before Sasuke's match started.

Considering that this guy seemed awfully full of himself despite apparently only having a single decent attack – that musical arm of his – she figured that her odds weren't bad.

In a move that showed deceptive foresight by the special-jounin, when Anko had been teaching her how to fight whilst she was drugged, she'd also taught her how to suddenly _stop_ being drugged. However, the truth of the matter was that Anko had taught it to her, not as a technique to use in battle, or even as a defense in case her original worry came to pass and her teammates started to drug her on missions, but rather as a way of keeping what Anko was actually teaching the rookie genin from being found out by the hospital staff whenever her sadistic teacher dragged her in there for healing.

It wasn't a complicated technique, and it _could_ be used on the battlefield without much issue and with great success, but that simply wasn't why Anko had taught it to her.

Still, considering how much Sakura had been drinking during training the last month, she probably fought better when she was drunk off her ass and not entirely aware of what she was doing at any given point of time.

So... she giggled dazedly at the proctor's skepticism towards her capabilities and drunkenness, and turned towards her opponent.

"Mummy-man." She greeted the Oto-nin with a respectfully blank face, before it despite her best attempts contorted into giggles. "Are you a mum, Mummy-man?"

It was probably good sense of the proctor to start the match then, as it made the Oto-nin's violent charge towards the annoying pink-haired rookie fully in accordance to the rules.

Dosu swung his arm, and the girl leaned back to dodge the punch, letting it pass by harmlessly in front of her face.

The Oto-nin smirked victoriously as the vibrations caused by his arm reached her ears.

And she kicked him in the balls.

Folding double at the sudden agony, Dosu stared with wide eyes at the completely unaffected girl in front of him.

"Man, that tune sucks ass. Totally ruined my buzz." She complained, before both of her joined hands connected to the back of his head, and his world turned dark.

It was the single most anti-climatic fight so far, but it was clearly a win, even if the audience would've liked to know how the girl had simply not reacted to the horrible dizziness that ought to have affected her.

The answer was quite simply, she'd had worse hangovers. Way worse hangovers. And Anko was a sadistic bitch who'd thoroughly enjoyed attacking the girl when she was either drunk off her ass, drugged to her eyeballs, or in withdrawal.

Basically, Sakura had learned to deal with fighting with hangovers as much as she'd learned to fight whilst drugged, and Dosu's signature attack was based around turning his opponent hopelessly dizzy and then ruthlessly beating on them until they couldn't move anymore. His special attacks were useless against her, and she'd capitalized on his surprise to reverse the tables and beat him into unconsciousness.

Anko laughed and whistled, waving happily at her student from her seat in the audience.

Sakura groaned as she clutched her head at the sharp noise coming from the crowd. "I fucking hate her so much."

XXX

The ANBU raised an eyebrow from behind his mask as he stared at the _very_ short ANBU standing in front of him, trying to tell him that he was being relieved with hand-signs that looked horribly improvised, as if whoever had taught them to the short one hadn't been entirely sure of what they were supposed to look like.

It was the single most laughable attempt at infiltration that he'd ever seen. And he'd been around to witness several of Konohamaru's escapades.

All in all, it was actually a tiny bit sad, more than insulting that whoever had thought of this believed that it would work.

Something hit him in the back of his head, and his world turned dark.

The short ANBU nodded cordially to the other short ANBU standing behind the now unconscious full-sized ANBU.

Soon. Soon they'd have their revenge for the slight against them. And then... well, there had been some hints dropped about ice-cream playing a part in whatever came after.

XXX

Kakashi made a small horrified noise from where he sat with the other jounin.

"Uhh... wha-?" Asuma turned to stare at him, confused.

"Ignore him." Anko dismissively waved her hand. "He thinks that we're being overrun by little demons with allergies or something."

"'Demons with allergies'?" Kurenai glanced between Kakashi and her friend, now sounding vaguely intrigued.

"They're replacing the ANBU." Kakashi whispered conspiratorially. "It's only a matter of time before they make their move."

"My hip and cool rival! It seems that your punishment for your student's Youthful display in the Forest has made you lose track of your hip-ness and cool-ness!" Gai exclaimed, sounding as if he wasn't sure if this was a good or a bad thing.

"You don't understand!" Kakashi hissed. "They're _everywhere_."

The jounin around him simply shook their heads in pity and turned to look at something else.

Kakashi saw another full-sized ANBU go down from the corner of his eye, being quickly replaced by another of the little demons, and simply curled into a ball and whimpered at not being believed by his peers.

XXX

Sasuke didn't know how he was supposed to defeat Gaara.

It hadn't taken him long to figure out that whilst 2-A was easily capable of turning Kakashi into a whimpering puddle of horror, it wasn't so much because of their skill, as it was because of Kakashi's sensitivity to them.

That, of course, hadn't meant that he hadn't pressed them for everything they knew in an attempt to get blackmail material on the frustrating man who was his jounin-sensei. It just meant that he couldn't rely on such techniques when faced with the homicidal maniac that was Gaara.

Instead, he'd be forced to do something completely different.

The trick, really, was to attack Gaara in a way that his perfect defense couldn't protect him from. This was easier said than done, as the only way to do so through taijutsu was to reach Rock Lee's level, and that was just simply insane. This meant that he had to focus on other ways of fighting the Jinchuuriki.

Genjutsu would be easy to trap him in, especially if his control and academic inclination was as horrible as Naruto – who probably still hadn't learned the most basic dispel – but it might also not at all affect the sand surrounding him.

So, even if he trapped Gaara in a genjutsu and made him think that his enemy was attacking from a different direction, the sand might react to defend him from the threat regardless. Which meant that he either had to make sure that the sand was also caught in the genjutsu, or that there was no harm for the sand to protect him from.

Trapping Gaara in a genjutsu that convinced him to vocally state that he surrendered, would've been ideal for the occasion. Unfortunately, Sasuke didn't know any genjutsu like that, and doubted that he'd be able to improvise a similar result with the ones he _did_ know.

That only left ninjutsu and fuuinjutsu. And whilst explosive notes in liberal amounts would've been very nice to have, they were too expensive for him to want to risk using as many of them as he guessed would be needed against an opponent like that. Which meant that he had to rely on ninjutsu.

His fire might be able to glass a bit of the boy's sand, theoretically, but that'd be both the end of it and exhausting, and it wasn't like the boy was in any shortage of the stuff, so that thought was out. This pretty much left him with the kawarimi as his only remaining ninjutsu.

Who the hell uses a kawarimi to fight a Jinchuuriki? Nobody could be that stupid, could they?

How would that even work? He'd use to the kawarimi to get inside of his defense, and then knock him out? That was stupid, no way would that work.

Except... it was the only idea he'd had that simply _sounded_ stupid, and wasn't simply completely tactically impossible to perform.

So he tried to think of what he could replace himself with that'd be 'allowed' by the sand to get close enough to Gaara for his plan to work.

The entire idea was that Gaara reacted to direct attacks, but didn't really care what the environment looked like. Which meant that as long as he could navigate the boy to walking into close proximity with something he could kawarimi with, then the boy shouldn't defend himself against it until it was already too late.

But how would he get him to move? It wasn't like the boy enjoyed walking around the place, as he seemed quite content with simply standing around and watching his sand beat down all his enemies without mercy.

If he was capable of getting within the boy's defense, then he could've kicked him towards where he wanted him to be, but if he could've done that from the start then there was no point with the plan anyway. In the end, the only thing he could think of was to make the boy _want_ to move from where he was, by either using a genjutsu, or by applying liberal amounts of explosive notes to the point where even he wouldn't be entirely convinced that his perfect defense would protect him from them.

Personally, he enjoyed the genjutsu version the best, as it was by far the most cost-efficient one.

This reasoning was what went through his mind as he finally stood before the proctor at the Arena floor.

The match began, and Sasuke hurriedly leaped away from the tendrils of sand, his Sharingan already beginning to spin a genjutsu that would make it seem as if the ground shifted underneath the Jinchuuriki, as he retreated to a safe distance.

Gaara was obviously displeased by the illusion and used his sand to simply lift himself clear of the offending ground.

But he was also moving away from the center of the arena, to the point where it was unsure of where he would be landing.

Which was actually perfect for Sasuke, as this meant that when he began launching numerous big things against his opponent, Gaara wouldn't think twice of landing next to one or two of them after he'd already blocked them.

Of course, whilst he kept up a steady barrage of things, he was also forced to continuously dodge the redhead's tendrils of sand in return.

Thankfully, Gaara didn't plan on staying aloft for any more time than necessary, and when his feet touched the ground, they did so very close to one of the objects that Sasuke had launched in his 'desperate' attempt to penetrate the boy's defense.

The audience blinked as a heavy sound echoed between the Arena walls, and Gaara hit the ground with a dull thud.

Sasuke stood over him, holding onto the heavy club that he'd known he'd only get one swing out of and praying feverently that the boy wasn't going to get back up, because it was unlikely that such a tactic would work a second time.

The sand that surrounded them slumped to the ground as well without a mind to control it, making Sasuke breathe a sigh of relief.

"Gaara of the Sand has been rendered unconscious, Sasuke Uchiha is the winner!" The proctor declared, much to the vocal approval of the audience.

XXX

Perhaps the single most important thing to know about Gaara, in connection to his status as a Jinchuuriki, is that he isn't allowed to sleep.

'Sleep' means that his waking mind is not capable of fighting back against the monster that has been sealed within him, and is as such overtaken by Shukaku who proceeds to go on a rampage much like any bijuu would do.

Gaara's father – or as he's more accurately described, the Kazekage of Suna – was fully capable of defeating the Ichibi and its sand even in its full form. Unfortunately, he wasn't always present at the scene to quickly subjugate the beast, which meant that casualties were inevitable.

Thus, Gaara was taught to never sleep, lest his mind be eroded away until there was nothing left of him. Whether this was true or not, it gave him a distinct desire to avoid sleeping, which was what they'd been aiming for.

So, when Sasuke knocked out Gaara with a well-aimed hit to the head with a heavy club, his siblings – who'd lived through many of the bijuu's rampages and were very aware of the thing waiting to be set loose on them all – were understandably distraught.

Then, as the immobilized sand suddenly began to move once more, Naruto landed next to the unconscious boy with a strange expression on his face.

"Shukaku, was it?" Not seemingly registering the danger he was in, but motioning for the proctor and his teammate to back off, Naruto regarded the redhead being covered in sand. "If you try to break loose and cause trouble. I will beat you down like Eva kicks Kyuubi around in its cage."

Sand exploded towards him, only to break against a strange immaterial shield covered in arcane-looking symbols. Because of course Eva had taught the blond idiot how to cast at least a rudimentary shield spell.

"Right." Naruto straightened. "This is a warning shot." And began to chant something under his breath.

The deafening crack of thunder hit the audience and gathered ninja like an actual punch, the blinding light of it causing colors to dance across their retinas.

The ground next to Gaara was blackened and glassed.

The sand hesitated, for a moment unsure of whether reaching for its freedom was a good idea with something like that threatening it. Then it dismissed the threat, because the crater the lightning left behind was tiny, and it was one of the great immortal bijuu.

Why should it be afraid of a human?

Shaking his head in annoyance as he leapt back from the suddenly violent sands, Naruto took a deep breath and began to chant again.

"Don't say I didn't warn you. Redheads are free-game after all."

Temari felt a sudden, horrifying chill crawl down her spine as she stared at the boy whose skin had turned an absorbing black with swirling tattoos glowing oddly across his skin. And with eyes like gold. Eyes similar to Shukaku's own, but so very different.

The Ichibi was mad. Everyone knew that. It was insane and violent, and its only wish was to bring suffering down upon the humans who'd imprisoned it so many times. That madness reflected in its eyes, the bloodthirst of it.

The blond's eyes were cold. Dangerous in a determined, calculating way. There should've been innocence in them, there should've been anger, or wariness, or fear. But all that could be found there was amusement. Cold, calculating amusement, swirling through the essence of what had once been Naruto Uzumaki.

The Third Hokage stared at his semi-adopted grandson, and wondered what in hell's name had happened to the boy that such an expression could so easily find its way onto the usually cheerful boy's face.

Kakashi stared at his student, and wondered not for the first time just how evil Eva truly was, and to just what degree she had influence over his charge's actions.

Sasuke stared at his teammate, and wondered why That Man went after their clan when the world had such creatures of power that he could've tested himself against instead.

Sakura stared at her teammate, and wondered curiously if she'd perhaps hit the drink a bit too harshly, because she was having issues with keeping her knees from buckling.

The genin of Konoha stared at the dead-last, and wondered just what the hell the Academy teachers must've graded for the blond to not get promoted to genin on his first try.

Kankuro stared at the blond, and realized in confusion that he didn't want to see his brother fight that person, and that he was seriously considering jumping into the fray in an effort to protect the homicidal maniac that was his younger brother.

Temari was already forcing her legs to move.

XXX

Naruto had known that there was something wrong the moment that Gaara had hit the Arena floor.

He hadn't been sure what exactly that something had been, but it'd been enough for him to act on. Because whilst Sasuke was definitely a jerk, he was still the closest thing he had to a best friend.

Eva managed to explain Shukaku to him as he ran, because unlike him, she'd actually paid attention to things, and had had more than enough time on her hands to torture the Kyuubi for answers to her questions. So she'd known about Shukaku and its madness, and now she was telling him in turn.

And even if Naruto didn't like the thought of fighting someone who was in a way _just like him_. He remembered Eva's description of her life, and knew that Jinchuuriki were not the only ones who were dragged into Darkness against their will.

So he fired a warning shot, and got ready to fight, even if that meant that he might seriously kill the redheaded boy.

He didn't want to. It was horrifying. It was disgusting. It was _necessary_. And everything else was secondary.

Shukaku roared in anger as it failed to kill the one who'd dared to threaten it, and the sand it'd gathered quickly grew in size until it towered over the Arena walls.

Like always, an amused girl's voice chanted the incantations with him, making their voices echo together inside of his mind in an unsettling chorus. And this time, they were once again going for the big guns.

Thankfully for the audience, Naruto's aim wasn't nearly as bad if he didn't use his clones.

"Lightning God Lance, Titan Slayer." And a gigantic spear of lightning coalesced in his hand, before the genin hurled it through the bijuu's back, pinning it to the ground.

It shouldn't have been an issue to the Ichibi, because no matter what size they made it, why would sand be bothered if someone pierced it with a spear? If someone nailed it to a wooden plank? Such things couldn't be used against sand.

But it could be used quite effectively against _glass_.

Shukaku, hindered in its movements as its sand melted around the lance's point of impact, still managed to turn to face the blond little pest of a human.

Only to belatedly realize that perhaps it ought to have listened to the boy's words.

Because something was _wrong_ with the boy, and a second presence was leaking through his body in a way that made it remember that despite how great and powerful it was, there were eight others just like it. And even if the Ichibi couldn't recognize the presence as one of its siblings, it was most definitely the presence of a peer.

It was old, possibly even older than itself. It was powerful, easily on par with itself. And it wasn't angry or scared at the sight of the Ichibi's true form.

No, it was _excited_, amused. There was an almost gleeful anticipation as the laughter finally began to echo between the Arena walls.

The laughter, channeled through her host Naruto Uzumaki, of the Evil Undead Mage Evangeline AK McDowell.

Because the boy didn't want to fight against the redhead, and even if he knew that it was important that he did so, he was happy to briefly allow Evangeline's essence overlap his own in an effort to remain unfeelingly objective in the coming struggle.

He couldn't really access her powers, but if he concentrated, he could let her... continue fighting when he closed his eyes.

He didn't want Eva to become a murderer, even if she kept telling him that she was Evil and that she'd already killed more people than he could count. But he didn't want to risk tainting his own hands, and instead did something selfish.

He closed his eyes and asked Eva to have mercy on his fellow Jinchuuriki.

Even if he _did_ have red hair.

XXX

Eva, happily toying with a bijuu that she'd never encountered previously, wondered if perhaps she was spoiling her host. Or if perhaps she was merely allowing him to remain the same honest idiot that she'd first met standing outside of her cage, looking at her with wide blue eyes.

Perhaps she was just a sucker for brats?

Regardless, the brat with the sand-bijuu within him was clearly a redhead, so she was perfectly within her rights to kill him off. No matter what Naruto begged of her. She knew that he'd forgive him for it. Not happily, perhaps not to the point where he'd ever be able to perfectly forget it. But he'd forgive her.

He was twelve years old, he'd signed up to be a murderer, a soldier, fighting for a Village that was filled with people who tried their best to ignore him. He was an idiot, and he was lonely to the point where she could feel it echoing through his mindscape as a constant never-ending ache.

It would sometimes ease, and it'd been growing lighter ever since he'd found her behind the bars to the cage, but it was still there.

A lonely child, dragged into Darkness against his will.

And the redheaded boy in front of her was just like him. Was it strange that he'd succumbed to the Darkness and allowed it to devour him in the hopes that he'd be able to find some manner of peace there?

Was it perhaps a mercy to kill him quickly, before his mind was completely eroded by the monster that struggled for control within him?

She didn't know. But they were fighting, so it was irrelevant. In a fight, only fighting is relevant. Everything else is a distraction, and she'd sworn that she would never again be trapped like she'd been by the Thousand Master. So she fought.

But as the Ichibi put its container in between itself and her next attack, they were both interrupted.

"Don't!"

It was a simple plea. Desperate beyond measure.

A blonde girl standing with a boy with terrified yet resolute eyes. Unabashedly begging for their brother's life.

She shook her head at the sight, wondering if perhaps this world wasn't filled with selfishly noble idiots too. Because Naruto now knew that Gaara had precious people of his own.

And precious people were to be protected at all costs.

So she surrendered control to the suddenly reawakened blond, and drifted back into her cage to wonder at what troubles this newest redheads would bring further down the line.

XXX

Kankuro stared at the boy who hadn't killed their little brother.

"Thank you." Slipped past his lips, and he wasn't entirely sure just how surprised he was that it had.

"Redheads are trouble." Naruto recited blankly, before given the three siblings a small smile. "But trouble usually makes life a lot more interesting to live through."

Neither of the two conscious genin were entirely sure how to respond to that, but decided that perhaps silence was the best answer.

XXX

Hiruzen Sarutobi clenched his eyes shut and tried to will his developing headache away.

It didn't work.

"There was an invasion planned by Suna and Oto?" He finally asked, watching as the assembled ninja nodded stoically in answer. "And it was interrupted, not because of anything we did, but because Sasuke Uchiha apparently decided to lead a class of Academy students into infiltrating the ANBU watching over the Arena, accidentally disarming the leaders of the Invasion in the process?" There were some uncomfortable facial expression, but they nodded all the same.

Sarutobi took a deep breath and closed his eyes again, briefly wondering if it was okay to feel the urge to strangle people when they'd clearly done good work, no matter how unknowingly.

"Then, when the Ichibi broke free of its container in the middle of the Arena, it was beaten down so quickly and openly that the remaining members of the Invasion began to reconsider following through with their plan?" Again, he received nods from those assembled.

He felt his lips quirk slightly in pride at the thought that Naruto had helped quell the invaders even without actually engaging them in combat. The boy was far too innocent for him to feel comfortable with having his hands bloodied when he was still so young.

"Right... this situation is certainly unconventional, and I'd been hoping that the tournament would last beyond the first round. But I suppose we ought to consider if anyone who fought deserve the rise in rank." He finally sighed.

The mixture of jounin-sensei, ANBU, and T&I members that had gathered in his office sheepishly decided that it would be for the best to forget that the Invasion had been thwarted so accidentally, and instead focus on something that didn't make them fell silly.

After a brief moments thought,m Sarutobi began to speak again. "Sasuke Uchiha's case shows definite leadership skills with his organizing of class 2-A, as well as the quick insight into young Gaara's defense in his individual fight."

There were approving murmurs, as chunin _were_ supposed to be at least capable of leading teams, and it never hurt to promote someone who'd already shown aptness in exactly that field.

Satisfied that his first recommendation had been met with such approval, Sarutobi continued his musings on who might be deserving of the vest. "It's admittedly highly unlikely that preemptively stopping the Invasion that he didn't even know about was something Naruto did on purpose, but he did show good instincts both during both his individual fight as well as with his quick interference when the Shukaku decided to break loose after his teammate's defeat of young Gaara."

"You're considering promoting both of them, sir?" Ibiki asked, sounding professionally curious, and probably wondering how Kakashi might act if two of his three rookie-genin passed their very first chunin exam.

"Along with Shikamaru Nara, for his brilliant strategic display against Temari of the Sand." He nodded in answer.

There was a pause as this was considered, before a second voice spoke up. "What about the winner of the other match, one Sakura Haruno?"

"Ah yes." He frowned thoughtfully. "She certainly showed a certain level of professionalism in capitalizing on her opponent's surprise." He admitted, and got approving nods at the reminder. "Though I'm still curious as to how she managed to deflect such an attack."

Anko cleared her throat. "She didn't, Hokage-sama."

Everyone in the room turned to stare at the woman.

"That attack would have completely ruined her sense of balance, turning her virtually incapable of moving." Sarutobi argued.

Anko scratched her head, looking sheepishly embarrassed. "By her request, I've been training her to fight with toxins in her bloodstream."

Those assembled gaped incredulously at her.

"Someone actually _asked_ for that?" Seemed to be the general consensus.

Anko shrugged. "She certainly used the words. Though she might admittedly have been high on pain medication at the time."

Sarutobi took another deep breath. "Is that why she was seen with several bottles of alcoholic substance at the Finals?"

Anko's face suddenly cleared of all of her regular easy-going cheer. "That sneaky little butt-fucker! I knew it was her! She raided my fucking stash! I'm going to-!" Her furious rant was thankfully interrupted before she said something incriminating in front of the Hokage, by Kurenai placing a hand across her mouth. Though, judging by the muffled sounds still emerging from the special-jounin, the hand didn't stop her from cursing.

There was a brief period of silence as everyone digested this new information.

"Right, so Sakura Haruno has shown either daring, or foolishness, in her chosen training methods, and was up against an opponent she was easily capable of defeating thanks to that training." Sarutobi summarized the girl's situation. "It's not unusual for genin to train specifically for defeating the first opponent that they know that they'll be pitted against, but it does show that she has a good head on her shoulders."

"Actually sir, she was just worried that her teammates were going to drug her up to her eyeballs – on a mission with potential hostiles – in an effort to keep her from annoying them." Anko interrupted from around Kurenai's hand, apparently having either calmed down, or simply deciding that she needed to at least _act_ calmly when correcting the Hokage's assumption.

Sarutobi turned to Kakashi, who whimpered silently at the sudden glares he was receiving from his fellow jounins.

"Kakashi-chan, what _exactly_ have you been teaching your genin?" He asked with deceptive curiosity.

"I don't know!" He finally exclaimed. "They were a brooding avenger, a hyperactive knucklehead, and a fangirl! And then I arrived one day and Naruto was _meditating_, and then everything started getting weird! And then he killed Orochimaru and got me assigned to the little demons as punishment! I don't wanna go back there! You can't make me go back there! I'll fight you every step of the way! Sasuke has them _trained_! The horrible little monsters have become _organized_!" He wailed in horrified despair.

The rest of them stared at the elite jounin's mental breakdown and decided that perhaps they ought to cut the guy a little slack before he went around the bend and tried to attack the 'little monsters' preemptively.

It'd be bad for their reputation as a reasonably peaceful Village to have such a famous person burn down the Academy.

XXX

Sasuke smiled as his plans came together so perfectly.

Nobody would oppose the last of a proficient bloodline when, rather than rush out into the dangers inherent in out-of-Konoha missions as a newly minted chunin, they decided to stick around inside of the Village and pass on their clan's accumulated knowledge to the young – and possibly find a strong, loyal member of the opposite sex to repopulate their clan with.

With that in mind, of _course_ nobody had opposed his own perfectly reasonable request to be assigned as a chunin-sensei at the Academy.

And after that, it'd barely taken him any blackmail at all to secure his position as the new homeroom teacher for class 2-A.

Kakashi's desperate plea for this not to happen had been ignored on behalf of the man's clear instability when in regards to the subject of Academy students in general, and Iruka's hesitance on the subject had been overlooked as his usual worry over things, even if in this case it'd been perfectly reasonable for him to worry about such a young person teaching students barely a few years younger than himself.

Not that that was what had actually why Iruka was worried, but he wasn't going to speak of that out loud and risk being considered as mentally unstable as Kakashi.

Because why would anyone think that Sasuke would be using his position to train his own personal army in preparation for hunting down Itachi and torturing him to death?

So it was, that when Sasuke introduced himself with a smile to the class of 2-A as their new teacher and they cheered with barely restrained glee, he couldn't help but begin to laugh.

And Iruka – who was in the classroom next door, trying to keep Konohamaru and his gang out of trouble – shivered in horror at the ominous cackle from the classroom that the newest member of the staff occupied. The rest of the school heard it as well and made personal notes to make certain that they didn't provoke the class of 2-A, for they were laughing along with him.

There were some things that would make anyone exposed to them nervous.

XXX

Kakashi stared at Sakura for a long moment.

"You're still a genin." He pointed out to her.

Sakura grinned up at him from her bottles. "Ah, indeed I am, sensei! But much more importantly, I'm legally an adult, which means that I can drink as much of this stuff as I want, and nobody can stop me!"

"Sakura, you really shouldn't drink so much-..." Kakashi started with a frown.

"Nobody!" She tossed an emptied bottle at his head.

It was easy to dodge around the bottle; because, mental-case or not, he _was_ still an elite jounin. It was decidedly more difficult to dodge the foot that lashed out and hit him in the stomach, launching him into a nearby tree.

A tree which _exploded_.

"I knew you'd come for me sooner or later!" Sakura declared with wild eyes. "So I rigged the entire place to blow! If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me, sensei! Give me mind-altering substances or give me _death_!" Then she pulled a kunai.

Kakashi wondered briefly, if perhaps madness was an infective disease, and if perhaps it wouldn't be a really good idea to quarantine certain members amongst the ninja-force from interacting with civilians and young people.

Then he was too busy fighting for his life to think about such things.

The pink-haired girl might only be a genin, but she moved unpredictably, fought with reckless abandon, and had apparently rigged the entire area with traps in wait for his attempts at an intervention.

Kakashi found himself wiping a tear from his cheek as he considered the situation she'd put him in. She was just like the homicidal little maniac of a daughter that he'd never had. He was just so proud of her!

XXX

Naruto stared at the white-haired man drooling as he peeped on the women bathing.

"Chamo? Wasn't he supposed to be some kind of ermine, or something? How could he have had kids with this Rakan-person?" Naruto finally asked Eva, feeling confused. "I mean, they're both guys, aren't they?"

The white-haired man stiffened at his voice, before glancing back at him, a slightly revolted expression on his face.

However, Naruto wasn't really paying attention to him, because he was trying to figure out why Eva was laughing and banging her head against the bars of the cage at the same time. "Uhh... Eva? Are you alright?"

Jiraiya became even more distracted from his 'research' as he watched the blond boy talk to himself.

"What does brain-bleach mean?" He frowned thoughtfully. "And why do you need a bathtub worth of it?" He made a face. "Because if it's anything like paint-remover, that stuff is not good to bathe in. Trust me on this one."

Jiraiya felt his head beginning to tilt in a kind of confused awe as he realized that the boy was actually giving that advice from experience rather than common sense.

"And I'm too young to drink. You know that." He frowned, looking peeved. "I don't care how much Sakura-chan drinks. It's bad to do stuff like that. Iruka-sensei said so." He suddenly launched to his feet. "Don't insult Iruka-sensei!" And then punched himself in the face.

Jiraiya actually turned around fully as he began to watch this crazy kid have an argument with himself over whether or not this 'Iruka-sensei' was a wuss or actually super-awesome. It was a bit interesting to see only one half of the conversation, but it was perhaps weirder that 'Eva' was apparently pissed at him for punching himself in the face.

If it'd been some kind of long-distance communication-jutsu, then the conversation might've made sense. But then Naruto had punched himself in the face, and Eva got pissed at him, and then he started clutching his head over something _she_ did in retaliation.

It was possible that it could be some kind of long-distance synchronization-jutsu that allowed them to speak between each other, but he'd never heard of such a thing. In fact, if it existed, it'd probably be a Kekkai Genkai, and he was pretty sure he would've been informed about such a useful bloodline being cultivated in his home Village.

Finally having enough, he spoke up. "Oi, kid! What are you doing over there?"

The boy looked up, surprised at his voice and looking an awful lot like he'd already forgotten all about what had started his and Eva's argument. "Talking with Eva." He responded honestly.

"And who's that?" Jiraiya asked.

"Evil Vampire Mage that lives inside of my seal." He answered with a tone that implied that what he spoke of was uninteresting facts.

Jiraiya found that despite this, the facts weren't even remotely uninteresting. "'Seal'? You have someone sealed inside of you? Who talks to you?" Jiraiya started sweating, because now that he thought about it, the boy _did_ look an awful lot like his late student Minato.

The boy blinked, then made a noise of realization. "Ah, you're worried about the Kyuubi? Don't be. It's kind of cat-sized. Really fun to punt around the cage." He nodded seriously.

Jiraiya paused in his terror and went over that statement once more, before clenching his eyes shut against the sudden onset of a headache. "What?"

Sighing in tired resignation, the boy began to explain. "Eva got sealed with the Kyuubi by accident. She's really strong though, so she kicked its ass, but it wouldn't die, so now she's using it as entertainment."

Jiraiya stared at him for a long moment. "... I have a headache now." He finally admitted.

The boy shrugged. "Eva says you deserve it. And, since you're a pervert, I agree."

"Where's your jounin-sensei anyway?" Jiraiya frowned at the brat.

"Staging an intervention against my former teammate's obsession with mind-altering substances." The boy answered readily.

Jiraiya blinked. "And where's your other teammate?"

"Training a bunch of Academy students into becoming his own personal army." Was the deadpan response.

The tone sounded like he was telling the truth, but the words _had_ to be a lie, or at least not at all what he'd just heard, because that was crazy-talk. "And why is he in charge of Academy students?" Jiraiya decided to play along.

"Because he got assigned there by personal request after becoming chunin." Naruto shrugged. "At least he's happy, which is good since that bastard usually never smiles. It kind of makes me wonder what _I'll_ do though..." He trailed off in thought for a moment. "Should probably try to find something that'll let me visit Gaara so that he can sleep."

Because there was a sleep spell that Naruto had finally managed to learn, and Gaara was a very enthusiastic test-subject due to his chronic insomnia, so it was a win-win situation.

Fortunately, as it would've given him an even worse headache than he already had, Jiraiya knew none of this. "You're a chunin? Already?" He stared skeptically at the blond boy. "Don't look like much, that's for sure, guess they let anyone be chunin these days."

Naruto's eye twitched. "Oh, really?" And then their side of the bath exploded.

To be fair, Jiraiya's first introduction to his godson could've easily gone a lot worse than a spontaneous fight to the death. Probably.

XXX

The Hokage drew deeply on his pipe, hoping against hope that it would ease his frustration with the three people in front of him.

Two of them looked vaguely contrite, the third was damn near dancing a jig.

He couldn't exactly punish Kakashi for his student's behavior since the boy had already graduated to chunin and thus moved beyond being the man's student, which was why Kakashi seemed so annoyingly ecstatic about the current situation.

"Why exactly, did you believe it to be a good idea to level the bathhouse to the ground?" He asked the two guilty-looking people.

"He started it!" Jiraiya hurriedly foisted off the blame on the younger one.

"You were being an ass! And perverts should be exploded anyway! It's tradition!" Naruto argued.

That last one was news to Sarutobi. "Really? Since when?"

Naruto blinked stupidly at him for a moment, as if not understanding what he was talking about. "It's always been like that." He finally declared. "Guy sees girl naked, guy gets blown up. See, tradition."

"I think that's more related to the dangers inherent in peeping at girls who are capable of exploding the offender." The Hokage rejected the boy's argument.

"Actually, the kid has a point." Jiraiya interjected with a serious face, before turning to Naruto with a bit of condescension. "Even if he did get the gender of the person doing the exploding mixed up."

Naruto stared at the man for a long moment. "So... I just have to be a girl?" He asked for clarification.

"Yup." Jiraiya nodded, proud that the kid had accepted it so quickly.

Naruto continued to stare at him for a moment, before suddenly shrugging. "'Kay." Then he made a hand-sign. "Revised, Oiroke no jutsu!" And promptly turned into a girl.

Sarutobi's pipe fell out between numb lips as he stared at the innocent blonde girl standing in front of him, Jiraiya's jaw dropped, and Kakashi leaned back and reveled happily in the knowledge that he couldn't in any way be held responsible for this twist of events either.

Naruto, now a fully-clothed girl who looked like an odd mix between 'Naruko' and Eva, smirked victoriously up at the white-haired old pervert. "See. Now it's perfectly in line with tradition."

Jiraiya reached out and poked the girl in the chest, eliciting a indignant squeak as the now-blushing girl batted his hand away with much force.

"Well... I'll be damned..." He finally nodded. "Alright, there you have it sensei, the kid was just following tradition, ain't nothing wrong with that."

Sarutobi turned his disbelieving eyes towards his eccentric student, and wondered if perhaps the man had been hit over the head a few too many times over the years. Then he buried his face in his palms and groaned.

XXX

Tsunade stared at the two people in front of her.

"Sensei sent you, not to take me back, but because he didn't want to deal with your logic?" She hesitantly asked for clarification.

"He should've sent Kakashi-sensei too, he's been acting weird." Naruto commented absently.

"He got stuck with Academy students, right? Those kids are creepy." Jiraiya deflected his apprentice's argument.

"But he keeps saying that Sasuke is Evil, and I know for a fact that Sasuke hasn't written a proper contract for his Evil-ness, so that can't be right." Naruto frowned.

"Some Evil people also hate paperwork too much to write stuff down." Jiraiya shrugged.

"That's not right!" Naruto protested. "That'd ruin the entire point of being Evil!"

"Which is?" Jiraiya asked curiously.

"To mess with people's heads! How are you supposed to mess with people's heads without a contract that only you know the loopholes within!?"

"The Evil contracts are allowed to have loopholes?" Jiraiya breathed in fascinated awe.

"Of course. Everyone knows that, that's why they're so good for messing with people's heads." Naruto nodded seriously.

"Would you two idiots shut the hell up!" Tsunade interrupted them.

"I'm not an idiot! I'm a super-pervert!" Jiraiya huffed indignantly.

Naruto blinked, having been just about ready to yell back at the blonde bombshell, but suddenly getting distracted by something that Jiraiya had said. "You're allowed to be super?" Naruto asked the white-haired man with sparkling eyes. "Then I wanna be a super-idiot! I won't settle for mediocrity!"

Tsunade took a deep, calming breath, and then turned the ground into a crater. "Shut up! Both of you!"

There was blessed silence.

"I think I understand why sensei sent you two the hell away from him." Tsunade finally admitted with a resigned air. "This is going to be a long month."

Because there was no way that she'd be able to get rid of the two of them before the time ran out on their mission, which had basically been to 'check up on her and make sure she was alive'. It wasn't like Sarutobi would allow them back inside Konoha before the month the mission spanned was already up anyway.

She certainly wouldn't have.

Tsunade made a noise of despair. She needed to get drunk. Really really drunk.

XXX

"Buh-... wha-...?" Sarutobi gaped at his student an her apprentice.

When, after a moment during which the older woman grumbled to herself, it became obvious that she wasn't going to answer them Hokage's confusion, the apprentice spoke up.

"Tsunade-sama said that there was a high chance of you giving the... 'idiot-duo' the mission of checking up on her the moment they returned in an effort to not have to deal with them. And then she said that if it was a matter between facing heartache, phobias, and annoying people, or being exposed to the two of them indefinitely without chance of escape, Konoha seemed a rather welcoming option all in all."

Sarutobi muttered a curse under his breath at having such a perceptive student. Damn kids shouldn't realize when they're being used for his schemes in finding a bit of peace of mind.

The annoying part was that he was fairly certain that Jiraiya had known what he'd done the moment he'd decided to give them the mission, but hadn't cared enough to object about it.

It was probably for the best though, since Naruto would've most likely gotten restless within the first three times he sent them on that mission anyway, and simply decide to cause an international incident by blowing up a mountain for the hell of it.

The mission might've been a temporary fix, but it would've been so _wonderful_ if it'd been a perfect one and all of them had just stayed out of his hair and not caused him any more paperwork. Even if he _was_ most definitely happy to see one of his precious students alive and well.

Still, this meant that the 'idiot-duo' – that Tsunade had apparently so aptly named them – was back in Konoha, and he still hadn't managed to get Kakashi to stop skipping through the streets – and randomly shouting that he was free, before cackling madly – or Sakura Haruno to not get drunk – she'd apparently developed a technique that _saved_ the buzz until she could properly enjoy it, meaning that she was now damn near continuously drunk even if they commandeered her bottles the moment she was spotted with them – and Sasuke had showed some unsettling competence emerging from within his class.

Who'd thought that teaching the students to henge their targets into people they didn't like during target practice was actually an effective way of motivating the children? Not to mention how it helped deal with both concentration, intimidation, and logical calm in regards to people they disliked.

All in all, Sarutobi wasn't sure if reading Iruka's weekly reports on the young chunin's progress in his teaching career was good for his mental constitution. He could feel his sanity slipping every time Iruka reported that he'd seen the young Uchiha cackling with mad glee after henge-ing the targets into people _he_ didn't like, and watching the class of 2-A reduce the targets into little more than splinters.

He got the distinct feeling that Sasuke Uchiha would never become a jounin sensei, simply because doing so would mean to literally give him minions. And that was one of the few things that even Anko would've balked at.

Finally taking a deep breath, Sarutobi turned to the clearly aggravated woman. "Tsunade, I'm putting you in charge of Sakura Haruno and her recovery from her addiction to mind-altering substances."

Shizune stared at him, as her jaw dropped open in horror at what he was suggesting. "B-But-!"

He turned to her, a mad glint in his eyes. "If we're lucky, they'll kill each other over booze and save me the trouble of dealing with their drunkenness." He whispered conspiratorially.

"Wasn't that Kakashi's job?" Jiraiya asked curiously, having either not heard his teacher's whispered statement, or simply chosen to ignore it.

"Kakashi-chan thinks she's adorably homicidal, and has been seen telling people how proud he is over her violent and paranoid tendencies." Sarutobi sighed.

"Well, paranoia is a good thing." Jiraiya admitted.

"It's a disease." Tsunade argued tiredly.

"No it isn't." Jiraiya frowned at her. "It's a sensible attitude towards life. Not my kind of thing, but certainly not something you can classify as a disease."

"No, paranoia is a mental disease. What ninja experience is better called 'professional wariness'. Paranoia is something completely different." Tsunade explained, massaging her temples in an attempt to alleviate her headache.

"I don't care." Sarutobi admitted with a smile. "She's yours to handle, and since she's a genin, which means that you can – and will – be held responsible for her actions."

Tsunade turned to stare at him for a long moment. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?" She accused.

"Enjoying it? I'm _loving_ it!" His smile turned into a grin. "Do you have any idea what kind of crazies Kakashi raised? Do you have any idea what kind of paperwork that generates? Do you have any idea what it's like to sentence someone to shoveling manure and _have them smile and thank you for getting them away from the terrible little monsters is like_!?" He demanded, eyes wild.

That Kakashi's happy mood hadn't been curbed, had most certainly not been for lack of trying from the Hokage's side of things. But it wasn't as if he could send the man back to the Academy, considering the mess he'd caused last time he'd been sentenced there, and everything else seemed akin to heaven for the man in comparison.

It was frustrating to spend your days dealing with crazy people.

XXX

Sakura stared at the woman in front of her.

"Those are some big gazoombas." She finally admitted with a nod, before saluting her with her bottle.

Tsunade's eye twitched, before she took a deep breath and tried to convince herself that beating the girl within an inch of her life was not the best course of action. "I've been assigned to keep you from acting out."

Sakura raised an eyebrow at her from behind the bottle that she was currently emptying into herself.

"That means, I'm here to keep you from being drunk, or drugged." Tsunade explained.

Sakura stared at her for a long moment before muttering something about doorknobs, and began to slowly remove her bottle from the woman's immediate view.

"Which means that your booze is hereby confiscated." Tsunade felt a small curl climb its way onto her lips at the thought of fulfilling her assignment and at the same time expand her own stash.

Sakura made a thoughtful sound. "So... you're a hypocritical old hag, trying to steal my hard-earned booze, on the Hokage's orders." She considered this for a moment. "I wonder if I can cut a deal with Naruto early on for when he takes the Hat..."

Then there was no more time for silent musings, because the fight had begun. A fight in which Sakura quickly learned that this woman was clearly above Kakashi's level, and that she was also far more enthusiastic about actually beating the crap out of her than the deliriously proud madman that she called sensei.

XXX

**A/n: And that's the end of the continuous story, after this comes the time-skip to the epilogue that takes place several years down the road. Like, **_**way**_** down the road, but that will also hopefully answer your questions about various things.**

**Yes, I'm serious. The only plot left to explore here would've been just how long it took for everyone to descend into Kakashi-like madness, and that's not something I really feel like writing.**

**Amusing note, I had to rewrite a bit of this chapter because I lost (at least partially, though I might not have admitted it outright) a discussion on the Internet to someone whose knowledge of the Magia Erebea surpassed my own. I salute you for keeping me from writing stupid.**


	3. Epilogue

Ice and Darkness Epilogue

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

XXX

Sakura stared at the man in front of her, silently judging him with her eyes.

"They're a menace!" The man protested.

"There's a _reason_ why their house is outside of city-limits, moron." She finally told him.

The man hesitated, obviously considering this. "I nearly died!" Before in the end settling on repeating his former argument.

Sakura tapped her cane – useful thing, especially so since she kept accidentally hurting her foot by kicking things that deserved it – in mock thought. "Then maybe you shouldn't have tried to 'visit the Hokage at home to give your congratulations personally'." She suggested dryly.

The man puffed up, obviously in preparation to saying something about how extremely important he was, but Sakura interrupted him.

"_Anyone_ who knows the Hokage personally, knows better than to approach his house. _Especially_ since his lover moved in with him." She pointed out before pausing to swallow a few pain-killers in order to stave off remembering why she needed the cane currently. "So, either you don't know the Hokage personally, and as such should have no business approaching his house, or you _do_ know him personally and approached the house anyway, which means that you should be removed from the gene-pool before your dumbass genes gets passed on."

"Do you know who I am!?" The man finally roared.

"You're the dumbass who thought it'd be a good idea to approach a house filled with a super-idiot capable of blowing up mountains, and a sadistic Evil Mage capable of matching him every step of the way." She admitted honestly. "Those two fight all the time. Heck, they rebuild the house on a damn near daily basis, and if it wasn't for that tree-hugger with the weird face and his ultra-green-thumb, the surrounding area would be a goddamned wasteland by now."

"How could such violent people be allowed to run free!?" The man demanded.

Sakura paused, turning to stare incredulously at the man from where she'd been reading his medical file. "Well... he's the Hokage, you know." She shrugged. "Regardless, if you've got worries about that kind of thing, you should be talking to the Academy Police Force, or... well, the Hokage himself. I'm just a medic, which means that it's my job to unfortunately inform you of all the horrible, invasive, and downright sadistic tests that I just realized that I need to conduct on your person."

The man paled. "Wha-? You can't do that!"

Sakura smiled and leaned her trusty cane against the wall, before slipping on a pair of tight medical gloves. "You know what they say, sir. 'Doctor's orders'." She smiled, a cold, cruel expression that sent foreboding shivers down the man's spine. "Now _bend over_."

XXX

Iruka sighed as he stared at the younger man in front of him.

"No Uchiha-san. I won't falsify any of my students' grades so that you can snatch them up for the Academy Police Force."

Sasuke made a noise of disgust. "But I don't want to get the bottom-scrape." He nearly whined. "They keep reminding me of why it took me so long to bother with kill- uhh, _talking_ with Danzo about what happens to them after graduation."

"Was the reason for that that you were too busy with training an army of children for an assassination attempt on your brother?" Iruka guessed tiredly.

"A little bit." Sasuke admitted readily, knowing better than to lie to his old rival and once-upon-a-time-teacher. "Partly, it was because some of the girls are... clingy." He reflexively glanced over his shoulder to make sure that none of the girls were trying to ambush and undress him again. "But mostly it was because he wasn't stupid enough to touch any of _my_ students."

And even if he'd mentioned it so absently, as if it was nothing worthy of note, it was rather obvious to Iruka that despite his many complaints about the girls trying to sneak into his bed at night and molest him in public, he loved his students with all of his heart.

His heart was still a shriveled little black thing with barely any morals at all and which corrupted anyone in proximity to him, but it was at least there. And that was more than could ever have been said about Danzo's.

No, Iruka might've been vehemently against the Uchiha's stint as a chunin-teacher at the beginning. But it was easy to see that being surrounded by the insanity of class 2-A had been good for the young man.

Whether it had been good for the rest of Konoha... well, that really depended on who you asked.

Kakashi had been known to state in between drinks that if Sakura was the adorable daughter he'd never had, and Naruto was the idiot little half-brother who he'd gotten stuck with raising, then Sasuke was adopted. The word 'adopted' being uttered in a manner distinctly reminiscent of tasting something foul.

He'd never really forgiven him for his organization of the 'little monsters'.

Still, the Village ran a lot smoother than it once had, with Sasuke's class of 2-A taking up the mantle of restoring a working police force to the Village, whilst at the same time pressuring ANBU into actually behaving like the elite that they were supposed to be, lest they be shown up by a bunch of brats.

The fact that a large portion of 2-A was nowadays part of ANBU themselves, as the Academy Police Force was supposed to be a good way to give work to ninja until they reached jounin and no further – with even chunin members being relatively rare – had of course helped raise the standards somewhat.

In fact, the only people on the Academy Police Force that were of jounin level, were those who'd managed to repeatedly refuse their promotions for various reasons. Such as Sasuke's 'I'm fucking busy here, go bother someone else before I release the ankle-biters after you'-speech, which had been written down and framed by his slightly worshipful students.

He loved them, and they loved him. He was considered by some as the 'second Hokage', which was in no small part reinforced by the fact that he was former teammates with the _actual_ Hokage, and that the two teammates got along like a house on fire.

Sasuke was happy in his role as Chief of the Academy Police Force, and Iruka was happy that his former student had found a role so uniquely suited for him and his particular brand of madness.

There was no way he'd fake his students' grades in order to help him out though. No way in hell.

"And vengeance had nothing to do with it." Iruka deadpanned.

"My brother's innocence suddenly coming into light was a fortunate side-effect." Sasuke stated innocently.

"And where _is_ Itachi-san, anyway?" Iruka asked curiously, having not seen him in a while.

Sasuke's eye twitched. "He's been busy with writing his contract."

Iruka opened his mouth, then closed it again, before slowly tilting his head. "But... he's _innocent_." He finally argued.

"Apparently, innocence has nothing to do with Evil. And my brother wishes to follow the proper procedures." Sasuke pinched the bridge of his nose, grimacing as if in pain.

"But, _why_?" Iruka asked.

"I think he's writing in a clause to allow him to kill anyone who threatens the production of pocky." Sasuke sighed.

There was a moment of silence in between the two.

"At least he hasn't barricaded himself in his basement and forgotten to pack anything for his 'siege' other than porn." Iruka finally tried to look on the bright side of things.

Sasuke frowned at the memory of that particular incident. "I had to write up and press through a new law that allowed me to expose the APF members to unsavory things, before their parents allowed us to drag him out of there."

Iruka shook his head sadly. "An entire week... he'd been living on water leaking through the walls, and the paper of his porn books."

Their eyes met, and they both chuckled at the man's misfortune.

They might be rivals, but they'd also become rather good friends over the years.

XXX

"She could've done a lot worse." Jiraiya tried to comfort her.

"Really? Name one." Tsunade challenged him with a growl from where she was doing her best to empty the bottles set out in front of her.

"Well... there's the Uchiha kid." Jiraiya tried after a moment of hesitation.

"Which one?"'

Jiraiya shrugged. "I'd go with 'both', since one of them is clearly developing a harem, and the other one is a former missing-nin and currently working as a glorified accountant."

"What's wrong with accountants?" Tsunade peered curiously at him.

Jiraiya nearly choked at her having to actually ask that question. "The paperwork." He hissed.

Tsunade snorted, taking another gulp of her sake. "That's an argument for not _being_ one, not about _dating_ one."

Jiraiya made a thoughtful noise as he sipped at his own drink. "True, I suppose."

"And even if you include the madness those Uchiha seemed to have developed from inbreeding, I'm still not sure Shizune choosing one of them wouldn't have been better. At least one of those brats are good with kids."

Now it was Jiraiya's turn to snort a laugh. "Yeah. Kakashi-chan isn't all that good with children, is he?"

Tsunade made a sad noise. "How am I supposed to spoil her kids rotten if her lover panics when she becomes pregnant and flees the country? I'd have to hunt him down and drag him back first, that'd be an awful lot of work."

"Oh don't worry about that." Jiraiya waved her off. "Kakashi-chan might be paranoid, but he knows better than to try and run from his responsibility like that. His students wouldn't let him hear the end of it, even if they had to explode half the Elemental Countries to drive the point home."

Tsunade hummed silently as she considered this. "True. So he's probably just going to make sure to show up only when the baby sleeps, forcing her to take care of it on her own."

"Nah." Jiraiya shook his head, recalling something he remembered Naruto saying. "He might be terrified of kids, but there's this saying about other people's kids and your own children."

Blinking at that phrasing, Tsunade hummed thoughtfully. "He'll hate the idea of having kids until they stare up at him with his own eyes, is that it?"

"Something like that." Jiraiya shrugged.

A silence stretched out between the two teammates as they drank.

"She still could've found someone _better_." Tsunade finally muttered silently.

Jiraiya snickered. "Chicks like guys with issues, it gives them a project." He argued with an amused smile.

"Oh god, not this theory again." Tsunade hurriedly reached for a bottle to distract her from the man's impending rant.

Jiraiya just laughed.

It wasn't like he'd ever tell her that part of the reason he'd become a 'super'-pervert, had been because he'd been hoping for the cute girl on his team to decide that she'd help him get it out of his system.

It'd been a very long time ago after all.

XXX

Sarutobi smiled contently as he drew on his pipe.

The man standing in front of him kept on trying to explain to him just how amazingly important he was and that he really had to see the person in charge and that that person needed to listen to him.

Sarutobi let the smoke curl around his lips.

It'd taken ages to get it right, chakra-manipulation so fine that even his female student had been impressed.

The man blinked curiously, expecting an answer instead of Sarutobi peacefully ignoring him and continuing to smoke.

Then the man began to notice that the smoke lingered in the air in a way that didn't seem natural.

Mildly confused at why a ninja would have techniques that caused small clouds of tobacco smoke to linger oddly, the man stared intently at it for a long moment.

Finally, he caught sight of something within that smoke, and he turned red.

Spluttering uselessly and red in the face, the man turned on his heel and disappeared in a huff.

Sarutobi allowed himself a smug smile as the cloud began to dissipate.

It'd probably been his most brilliant idea yet, to teach himself how to make the smoke of his pipe spell out "not my responsibility" to anyone who tried forcing him to do work despite his retirement.

Life was great.

XXX

Itachi narrowed his eyes at the shopkeeper.

"My contract state that whilst I cannot outright kill anyone who refuses to supply me with pocky, I _can_ traumatize them." He explained in a calm and efficient voice.

Sai, standing behind him like he usually did whenever the two of them went out to interact with people who'd been raised to think and feel like normal people, took careful notes.

The shopkeeper raised a skeptical eyebrow. "You and what army? The weird pale kid over there, scribbling with a notebook? Please. I'm not scared of you."

Itachi's already narrowed eyes was added to by a slight crinkling of his eyebrows.

This was not going as smoothly as he would've liked. "Very well, I suppose I shall be forced to make an example out of you." He stated in a neutral voice. "Tsukuyomi."

XXX

Kisame stared at him for a long moment.

"You used an S-Class genjutsu on a civilian shopkeeper in order to 'make an example' of them?" He finally asked, sounding vaguely incredulous.

"That is correct." Itachi admitted with a small nod, munching on his pocky with a satisfied air.

"I'm pretty sure that's punishable by law." He pointed out.

Itachi narrowed his eyes at him in annoyance. "I was following my contract, and gave explicit warning."

"Which makes it legal under the new law of Evil Contracts, that the Hokage passed through in order to keep his lover out of trouble." Sai cut in, smiling helpfully.

Kisame muttered something under his breath that sounded vaguely like "and boy didn't that cause a mess".

Itachi ignored the mutterings of the man who hated lies, and instead mused briefly at how it'd come to be that instead of following Madara's mad plan, Kisame had actually joined him in his defection back to Konoha when the opportunity had presented itself.

Maybe it'd been because the current Hokage was insane on a cheerful, but still fundamental level. And that when said Hokage had heard of his reasoning behind joining the Akatsuki, he'd started telling the swordsman things that weren't lies.

Things that nobody really wanted to know.

He'd been talking for _hours_ after strapping the poor man down, so that he had no choice but to listen defenselessly to his words.

Having experienced such a gruesome exposure to 'truth' as a first taste of what a world without lies would truly mean for its inhabitants, Kisame had rebelled against Akatsuki with a passion. Even if he was still utterly terrified of the Hokage and his blonde lover.

After that... well, the Akatsuki had fallen apart at the seams, what with the young man – that later became the Fifth Hokage – deciding after a brief discussion with his informant and a few advisors, that it was perfectly reasonable to go out and defeat both members of the 'zombie-duo' single-handedly, which he then proceeded to do. And then there'd been the encounter with the 'art-duo' between him and his blonde lover.

Apparently, the blonde girl had a... grudge of some manner against Sasori. Those accompanying them on the mission hadn't been very forthcoming about what exactly she'd done to the redheaded puppet, but the way that they'd adopted a shade of pale green whenever the subject came up said that they didn't enjoy the memory of it.

No, the Akatsuki hadn't lasted long past that, and Pein had been in for a nasty shock when he'd realized that not only was Naruto somehow perfectly capable of matching his god-like power every step of the way, his very _name_ was also a reminder to the disillusioned man that there were things left to dream of, and that those that vied for peace would never give up, even when all seemed lost.

When Madara had tried to interrupt them from becoming friends... well, apparently the blonde lover of the Uzumaki was apparently just as insanely capable as he was, because she'd beaten the crap out of the man.

A legend in his own right, a mastermind, the greatest warrior of the Uchiha-clan. And he was treated as a disobedient child and then pretty much pulled over the small girl's knee. Not literally though, thank goodness for small mercies, there were some things that Itachi _really_ didn't want to accidentally memorize with his Sharingan.

Of course, then it'd become even _more_ complicated when Kakashi recognized his old teammate Obito in the man's face, and proceeded to declare that if he didn't surrender to Konoha immediately, that he'd be forcing him to return to the Academy as a student.

When everyone had questioned his sanity, Kakashi had simply stated that since Obito hadn't come _home_ after the mission where he'd lost his eye, he was still technically under Kakashi's command as he'd been the highest ranked member of their team.

The saddest part of it all was perhaps that his argument had actually worked against the masked man.

Oh, there'd been security placed around the kind-of-missing-nin in case of the crazy jounin's threat falling through, but he'd readily surrendered to Kakashi's mad logic in a way that made everyone feel distinctly confused about it all.

Then again, they didn't know that he'd done so only after he'd been told that his cousin Sasuke had finally decided to fulfill what was apparently a crazy plan of Obito's to organize the little monsters in the Academy into a personal army.

Itachi could relate to that announcement affecting a person's judgment.

The idea of it had, after all, been odd enough for even himself to admit publicly to his orders in regards to the Uchiha Massacre, and return home in order to investigate the matter closer.

The fact that Sasuke's idea had been one that Obito had already planned... well, that hinted on the two of them having compatible thought-processes, which – considering the missing-nin's madness – didn't speak a lot for his brother's mental stability. But, then again, that was hardly anything new.

What kind of sensible and emotionally stable person would instinctively run away when a dozen young, attractive, physically fit, and very much beloved women try to strip him?

If the youngest Uchiha had been gay, Itachi could've understood the reason for it, but he wasn't. He wasn't in love with someone else either, because he was far too busy being horribly fond of the little monsters who'd grown up and were now trying to get into his pants.

It was all very peculiar.

Great fun to watch though.

XXX

Naruto stared down at the sleeping form of his lover, wondering – not for the first time, and probably not for the last – what it meant that the only girl he'd ever convinced to sleep with him was... well, _her_.

Sure, he loved her. And boy hadn't that been a shock to figure out? Worst thing was that Ayame had known about his infatuation for months before _he_ did!

No, loving her wasn't the problem. Rather, the problem came into play when he tried to figure out what him being attracted to her actually meant for his fetishes.

Was he masochistic? To some degree, absolutely. It just wasn't any fun if the girl in question couldn't scare the living crap out of you when she felt like it.

Was he a attracted to older women? ... Well, personality-wise at least this seemed correct. It was just that she very rarely bothered with using her more 'adult' form. Mostly because she'd gotten so used to walking around in her younger form that she only bothered with using the illusion in order to match him whenever he decided that he needed to look older than usual for the sake of some kind of meeting.

Having stopped aging through constant usage of the Magia Erebea was in Naruto's mind a perfectly wonderful thing, since it meant that he'd be able to stay with the woman he loved without there being too much of a _visual_ age-gap between them. Still, kids that were barely fourteen years old were hardly the type to cut an imposing figure to the aged populace, so he tried to show them some semblance of his true age when he could.

But, his musings continued, if he wasn't attracted to older women, was he perhaps attracted to prepubescent girls?

Naruto blinked, suddenly feeling a horrifying shiver make its way down his spine.

Yeah, even in his own silent thoughts, he wasn't touching that thought with a ten-foot pole, no matter what amused suggestions his teammates had about his love-life.

In the end however, he couldn't really think it really mattered, since despite how he'd never be able to get a full answer to his own questions, he was very much attracted to Eva.

Violent, undead, vampire-girl that she was, she was also his single most precious person.

Not that he didn't do stupid things just for the sake of pissing her off, or embarrassing her, or making her laugh; or go out of his way in order to make her cry out his name as her fingernails dug into his back hard enough to draw blood.

Smiling, in spite of the slight wince as he felt the already-healing scabs on his back brush against their shared blanket, Naruto reached out to brush away a strand of blonde hair from her face.

She looked so amazingly peaceful when she slept. As if the worries of the world was simply washed away by her dreams.

Old man Sarutobi had been Hokage for the absolute longest of them all, but Naruto figured he could last a year or two past the Third's record, before retiring to go on a honeymoon with Eva in some far-off land.

It wasn't like he had to worry about aging, after all.

He really hadn't expected to become immortal back when he'd finally figured out a way to free the beautiful blonde from the cage in his mindscape.

The seal had been solid, impossible to break without also releasing the Kyuubi – who, despite his diminished state, Naruto really didn't want to release upon the world if he could help it – and so he'd been forced to _bend_ it instead.

And when he'd finally managed to make an opening big enough for her to escape through, they'd been surprised to find that the seal still bound the two of them solidly into the same mindscape, and that because of this, even beyond the effects of the Magia Erebea, their lives would be shared.

Maybe, one day, the two of them would pass on, somehow. But by the time that day came to pass, Naruto wondered if the Elemental Nations would still be standing.

Not that it really mattered.

He smiled happily as he placed a soft kiss on his lover's brow, before leaning back into the pillows and letting sleep overtake him.

Whatever would come, would come. And no matter how far into the future their lives continued, neither of them would ever have to be alone again.

XXX

**A/n: Yes, Sakura is a brilliant, but mean, doctor who walks with a cane and who has a drug-addiction. Ain't it just awesome? She also lives in a House, if you didn't catch the reference earlier.**

**Writing this story has been great fun, and though it's clearly another monument to my inability to allow my characters to act sanely for long periods of time (General rule of thumb being: the longer I write, the crazier they get) it's always nice to know that the craziness of it all is appreciated by the readers.**

**So, thank you everyone who Followed or Favorited this fic, and a big extra super-thanks to everyone who reviewed, because they won't settle for "mediocre"-thanks.**


End file.
